AmateurRadio.com

CT8/PA4N

I finally had a chance to fire up the K3 on Monday afternoon, it has been a very busy weekend besides I have been reading on most blogs how poor the conditions were....even for the digi folks. It was very windy and cold up this way on Monday with the surprise of snow in the morning. We have some 230KV lines at the back of the house and when they start to blowing around some (I guessing) loose insulator cause me some QRN. The blogs were spot on and the bands were not in real good shape at all besides the power line QRN was not helping either. Later in the afternoon the winds settled and the bands had some CW spikes showing on the P3 here and there.

230KV lines out back

I was on 20m and heard CT8/PA4N who was operating from Sao Miguel island (EU-003) on the Azores.  Frank was only going to be on the island until April 3rd so I wanted to give him a shot. The band was not busy at all, they were not running split and since conditions were not that great I pumped the K3 up to 5 watts. With only one repeat of my call I made the contact. As I was entering the logging info into DxLabs there was a pileup developing so it would seem I got in at the right time.  I also noticed that fellow blogger John N8ZYA has also made contact with the team as well.