AmateurRadio.com

When I got back to the car this evening around 1815z I switched on the 10m rig. It was tuned to the CW end and it immediately became apparent that conditions were still good – with a fierce pileup being audible. I didn’t stick around to see who it was.

I headed up to 29MHz to look for AM stations. One or two were audible, but the one that caught my ear was Rob W1AEX who was coming in really well. As I drove out of the station and towards home, I listened to Rob making some QSOs. To my surprise, rather than using boat anchor type gear, it turned out that Rob was using up to date SDR gear, a Flex radio. It sounded great! I laughed when Rob explained he was using a $2.79 microphone! There was quite a pileup going, so sadly I couldn’t attract Rob’s attention, but the story doesn’t end there.

I heard Malcolm, G8NRP calling Rob too. When it was clear neither of us had got through the pileup, I asked Malcolm if he had time to QSY and make a contact. We did, and it was a first AM QSO for both of us, which was a lot of fun. Not great DX, being 10 miles or so, but it’s a start!

Meanwhile, checkout Rob W1AEX’s station here