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Over the weekend I had my first QSOs on 29MHz AM from the home station, using the FT847.  It seemed to work fine, although I had a sense that my long feeder run was a bit of a barrier and I was probably doing better with slightly less power from the mobile!

On the train last night I was chatting on Twitter to Jon, G0IUE. Jon is located in Corsham, some 35 miles or so to the west of me. Jon had been working some nice DX in the late afternoon on 29MHz AM and I suggested that as I would soon be back at the car, we have a go and see if we could make a QSO.

As I was getting of the train, I had a tweet from Jon to say that he was working OX1B on 29.050 AM. I hurried along the platform as quickly as I could and got back to the car, but the frequency was quiet. However, I left the rig on the frequency and started my journey.

As I got out of the built up area, I could start to hear some weak signals and realised it was Jon calling CQ. Although I couldn’t copy him fully at that stage, I could tell he was there. Larry K1IED replied to Jon’s CQ and started a QSO. During one of the breaks in transmission, I dropped my call in and was delighted when Larry heard me.

Heading west all the time, near Abingdon, I was able to hear Jon quite well on ground wave. We were able to have a three way QSO for several minutes. Larry signed with us and Jon and I QSYed to GB3WH on 2m FM.

My destination, the Gym at Carswell, has quite a good take off in Jon’s direction, so on my arrival, I suggested to Jon we try on 29MHz AM. We did and we just able to exchange signals. Jon was easy copy for me, but my slightly lower power from the Anytone was only just making it. We moved onto SSB and it was a very easy QSO. Larry K1IED had been listening and joined in on SSB which was great fun.

A really nice, fun QSO – the stuff that memories of solar cycles are made of!

Jon shot a bit of video of the QSO (on AM) with Larry coming in really well.