5 Whats?

40 Meters didn't seem to have a whole lot going on. I called CQ up by the QRP watering holes for a while and was fruitless. I wanted to get my QSO in for the day; because I 've been doing real well in that department. In the first four months of 2007, I think I've only missed one or two days without at least one QSO.

I decided to go down to the bottom of 40 Meters and see if there was any decent DX that I could hear. I did hear an Israeli station calling "CQ USA"; and I tried calling once or twice without success. Then the station must have shut down for the night; as I didn't hear any more CQs out of him.

A bit further down the band I heard RA6AU, Vasili in Russia calling CQ. He had quite the little pile up going. I heard some pretty loud stations calling, too. For the heck of it, the next time he called CQ, I waited for just about two seconds before throwing my call into the mix. I figured that I'd let the QRO stations drown each other out for a bit; and then try and make an end run.

It worked! Vasili came back with "LJ?" and I repeated my call two times more. We exchanged RST and names and he was on to the next station with a "TNX QSO QRZ DE RA6AU". Not the rarest of DX; but it's always nice when a 5 Watt station can beat out some of the big boys.

73 de Larry W2LJ