V73 @15 CW
After emails I checked the cluster and noticed that V73 was there on 15m CW but not very loud in the morning my time. I decided to wait for a while to see if conditions would improve and started reading emails. Unfortunately, the band conditions remained the same with slow deep QSB kicking in every now and then rendering the signal barely audible.
During lunch time I decided to heat up the big amp and give it a try, since there was no demand and I was planning to work Conway guys as well. I was surprised to find V73 lonely. Maybe everybody were on that big 10m pileup trying to get through. V73 kept on calling CQ lonely while the amp was heating up. I QSYd to clear QRG, tuned the amp, checked the output power to about 1kW.
Sure enough he was still there calling CQ with nobody coming back. I waited the anticipated QSB period and sent my call twice. He came back, but heck.. the QSB ate my report. Decided to give my call once again to signal that I did not get good copy. And as expected he came back again with my call and 559 report. Good op. I sent the stamp RR TU back with his report and 73s, put the amp on standby.
3D2C @20 CW
I had my Flex 1500 QRP rig on 20m and was following the progress on the pileup. The pileup was more than 10kHz wide with lots of OH stations getting to the log. Many familiar calls among those whose station setup I know, so the propability of working Conway was reasonably high.
I turned off my QRP rig, went back to my TS-590 and the big gun that was already warm from the V73. This time I set the tx to 1.5kW. I planned to play it smart first and find his QSX and zero my signal there. This plan failed miserably. I tried to listen the pileup and get a hint where he was listening, but since most of the callers going through at my lunchtime were JAs it was tough to follow the original plan.
Since I had been monitoring the pileup already for quite some time I had a feeling that he was moving pretty fast in the pileup and picking the strong signals from the pack. So plan b that was. I decided to find more or less a clean frequency (about 7 up) and start calling. This operational mode is something I dislike doing, but it was lunchtime and no time to play cat and mouse games. I just hate working blind. I kept on sending my call with the rythm the op introduced. For some reason his runrate was clearly slower what I earlier counted in the morning. Maybe they changed the op, maybe conditions changed, or op just getting tired. I don't know.
I stayed on the same frequency propably five minutes, calling and calling. Usually he came back with a call and report after a period that lasted two of my calls (so that was the rythm). This time it was different. I gave my call standard two times and waited. Nothing. I sent my call once again. He sent OH3? back. OK, now I was pretty sure I had him in my sight. I sent my call twice and he came back with the expected reply. I sent back my standard stamp reply, got the TU back.
