Well I certainly had a very enjoyable evening on air last night and I don’t think I’ve ever had so many contacts, DX or otherwise in the one session. I’ve spent about 2 hours today entering them into the website logbook application that I’ve developed and they number around 35. It is a fairly rare occurrence for me to make many contacts in the one session with my modest setup and 100 watts so it was most enjoyable.

The evening got off to a poor start with poor conditions to the US for the Southern Cross DX Net. I checked in at about shortly before 13:00z and battled with very bad QRN from stations close by and poor conditions.

I gave up on the net and decided to call CQ DX at around 14:00z and I’m pleased that I did. Over the course of the next 2 1/2 hours I worked endless European stations with a pileup the likes of which I don’t ever recall experiencing. I’ve realised today that this was helped by a number of the stations worked spotting me on the DX cluster so thanks to the following stations:- UY7QN, UV7QA, ON5MA, R6AN, RX6CC, YO8SSB. There would have been more contacts but I feel that each station deserves the courtesy of a minute or two to get beyond “your signal is xxxx 73s”.

Countries worked during the evening included Belgium, England, France, Italy, China, Germany, Greece, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Russia, South Africa, Romania and Slovenia.

I also enjoyed a long QSO with Owen ZL2OPB who I had not spoken with before and Steve G3TPW near York where I visited last November. Also good to catch up with Paul AX5PAS (VK5PAS using a special event callsign for Australia Day and has a website here) and Jason AX2LAW (VK2LAW who was using a special event callsign for Australia Day).

I finally went QRT at around 16:30z mainly because I was worried that the car battery that I using was running out of charge and would cut me off air at any moment. May the excellent DX continue!

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