The excellent
VOACAP Online shows the specific route forecast
conditions.... this contact was predicted
DX Diary:
another feeding time for the piranhas, but a minnow gets through!
So up pops this signal at a wholly unexpected time of day on
20m. Is that an NZ or Aus accent? It quickly becomes apparent
that there is a real DX moment going on, so I dive on.
The local noise level is currently pretty horrible, but we have
come to expect that - the recent solar activity seems to be
getting the blame. But with ZL in night, the chances are the
noise at ZL is a lot less and Alan can hear more than can hear
him.
The magic moment where I was acknowledged starts
0:32 and fixes at 0:55 in. But the very tedious
i8vjk fails to stamp on me.
Imparare le buone maniere, Stefano, eh?
The rest of the pile up - including ct1ayn,
oz5jlh and more. Bless oe3kla (?) for talking after being asked to let the
poor g8 through. (I trimmed a fair bit of the fat out of this
one.)
But it
nearly didn't happen . Just as I was recovering from the shock I
had been acknowledged, the gardener started up the mower
not very far away... hear it 28 seconds into the first recording
above. Fortunately, it was better suppressed than some, and we
coped.
viable DX signal
One of the many unplanned hazards of DXing
It looks like this was not expected - this
agrees with VOA at around 30-40%, but this chart uses a 100w
dipole datum, and Alan was running 1kW and a beam - maybe around
17dB more. So probably about evened out.
