Radio at night

Tonight I heard some interesting stations:

• DA0UBOOT (100 years of German submarines) - I think it's the first time I have seen a 5-letter suffix!
• DP07M/mm - German expedition on a ship. The operator transmitted his coordinates - I think it was 75ºN, 3ºW.

Besides there's a lot of activity from islands - it must be IOTA contest coming this weekend.

More stations on 10 MHz

My homebrew key is much easier to work with than the microphone switches!

UE1OTA/1 is now in the log. To my amazement, I also heard K1NA and ZF2AH with strong signals. The distance to Cayman Islands is 8000 km - not bad for my casual antenna (yet to be given special treatment in this blog).

First QSOs of PA/SP2WDW

I have no "proper" antenna. I have no "proper" CW key. And I have just logged three QSOs with OY, F and G on 10 MHz CW!

It turns out that UP/DOWN keys of the microphone can be used to replace a paddle key. Such CW operation is far from comfortable, but it may be done. I'm going to build a better key soon.

The antenna I used deserves a detailed description, which will follow later.