In the last few hours of my latest foray into Ham Radio, my emotions have swung high to low to high again, all because of this DX.

The day started off great with news that KI4NR had fixed my FT-990 then proceeded to go into the dump quickly. I can’t remember the last time I’ve been so humbled. I was minding my own business sitting on a 20 meter pileup listening to hundreds of Hams calling a station I couldn’t hear, when a local Ham just 3 miles from me threw in his call and worked the non-existent station on “one call”. Cool, right?

Nahhhh – after Keith (KØKE) work the “invisible” station, we jumped up the band and I asked him who it was. That’s when he broke my heart. Keith told me the “ordinary” Russian station was 10 over 9, then he played back the QSO from his recorder and I’ll be damned if he wasn’t LOUD over there.  Mind you, really loud. I couldn’t hear a peep from the Russian on my rooftop inverted-vee, but he was 10 over 9 on Keith’s KT34 at 100′. What a difference.

Emotions can only go “so low”, but this post has a good ending.

I heard another HUGE pileup on 14.180 this morning  (I could actually hear this DX station – 5B4AIF from the Island of Cyprus). And a pileup it was! LID operators, tuner-upers, and other idiot Hams in addition to hundreds of “good” Hams were pulling out all the stops trying to get Norman in their logs, and I really didn’t think I stood a chance against not only the US stations but also all the European stations that had propagation.  It took a hundred plus attempts, but then I realized why I sent in for a vanity call when I upgraded to Extra Class years ago. Seems that NØUN and my “United Nations” suffix can stick out from the DX masses occasionally! It was music to my ears to hear him come back and ask for my call again.  Maybe he just noticed the “noun” (think verb) he wrote down and had to verify, or maybe he heard the “United Nations” and thought he had some kinda’ special ops station on the hook, but whatever it was – he’s in the log.

73,

NØUN