'Twas not "exotic" DX; but it was a rather rare entity; and the pileup was HUGE! When I went out to the park today at lunchtime, I found a buzz saw of stations at 14.042 MHz. Going down one, I heard VO2A the DXpedition to Paul Island (NA-205), off the coast of Labrador in Canada.There were a ton of Europeans calling, EA3, G3. UA9, HA5 were among some of the prefixes I heard. Labrador isn't so far from New Jersey in terms of the world of DX; but I thought I'd give it a whirl.
And about 10 minutes or so in, I managed to break through, putting 5 Watts into a Hamstick which was nestled in some tree limbs because of where I had parked the car.
The K1 doesn't have "true" split capability; so I had to set the K1 to the transmit frequency (where I was guessing that VO2A was listening) and I used the RIT control to tune "down 1" where VO2A was transmitting, so I could hear him. There's also a XIT feature on the K1 which will allow you to do the same thing, but basically the other way around; but I haven't really figured it out yet.
Soon after I worked VO2A, it started showering; so I packed up and headed back to work early. It was a portent of things to come as we had a pretty bad thunderstorm with some very hard rain later in the afternoon.
73 de Larry W2LJ
Hi Larry,
ReplyDeleteCongratulations on busting the pileup for VO2A. I've gotten them a couple of times (non-QRP, but not QRO either) and it can sure be a challenge.
About XIT, I don't have a K2 (I've got a 756 Pro II) but I'd assume the concept is the same. What I use XIT for is if I find a guy who seems to be working stations just a teeny bit off frequency, like up or down maybe 100Hz or so. I could just tune the main VFO and work him, but I like to have his xmit frequency zero beat (since the filters are set up for that), so what I'll do is first use RIT to zero beat one or two guys who he's just worked, then switch to XIT (turning off RIT) and tranmit there. You can do the same thing with RIT and moving the main VFO, but by using XIT I don't change the DX frequency at all, and it seems to work pretty easily once you get the hang of it.
73,
David, K2DBK