A cunning plan was hatched

Ken Osborne is my NBF from the antipodes. He sent me an email yesterday:

Hi Bill. I copied you just now on 20 mtrs calling CQ. Im sure it was you. readable about 3 by 1. You had a brief qso where you said you "didnt know what to expect on 20 mtr these days". I attempted to answer you on numerous attempts and you said you could hear someone weakly but then went QRT.

Ha ha. what frustration you couldn't hear me enough to hear me yelling out "Long Path". It so rare to hear a UK signal on the bands at the moment. No body up in the north seems to know there is long path prop in your summer evenings to lower ZL and VK. It's been forgotten, and I don't have short path due to local geography. If I got your call correctly then you were heard in ZL Timaru.

Ken ZL3OZ

Well, I fell off my chair, When I think of the hassle I go through to get trampled in the cluster pile ups, and here was the ultimate UK DX - NZ on the 13k mile path knocking on the door. So we set up a sched and checked the charts, and made contact at the first time of trying.

It's not the most solid QSO ever, but it is a QSO and reports were exchanged. I put up a tone beacon to help get noticed, and the contact was made. I know I go on about 100W and G5RV antenna being able to work the world, but here is more proof. The main thing is to avoid being spotted by the cluster gang. We tried 17m, but although we both heard a faint noise, it was not going to happen.

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And still the long path is there in September

This is an impressive session on August 31st 2017. We spend a lot of time just being amazed that the long path south was still viable - while general 20m propagation was rubbish..

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enough signal in a quiet band