17 January 09
Antarctica Calling
I’m still in a bit of disbelief about having had a radio contact with Antarctica late this afternoon. After a long walk, a late lunch, and a trip to Woodland we got back to the house around 4 PM local time when I settled into doing a little radio. There was an SSB contest going on so I figured I’d set up on 20 meters and try for a few quick voice contacts. The backdrop to this is that band conditions have been horrible of late (will we ever see sunspots again?) and I wasn’t surprised that 20 meters, being basically a daytime band, was pretty dead with nobody coming in from the east, though I did have a contact with a station in Hawaii.
I tuned around a bit more and heard “CQ CQ CQ this is Kilo Charlie Four Uniform Sierra Victor from McMurdo Station, Antarctica.” coming in weakly but clearly. Nobody else is trying to contact him either. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, I think (a good rule in radio), and pick up the mike and reply. To my amazement he comes back having copied half my callsign. After several go-arounds he gets my name, full callsign, and location (he mentions he once took a couple of courses in Davis); signals both ways are weak but readable.
I’m not sure what fluke of propagation enabled that contact, but it was definitely a thrill. It’s 8500 miles from here to McMurdo Station, not bad for 75 watts into my little Buddipole antenna!
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That is wild!
As a younger teen, I’d sit up nights searching for clear channel AM stations. I’d jot down program details I’d hear from up to halfway across the country, mail it in to the station, and receive a QSL card, which I’d tape to my bedroom walls.
The night I got New Orleans from Newport News, Virginia was a special thrill. But Antarctica!
After said long walk during which I acquired the obligatory four blisters I was lying in bed reading the following: “An industrious knitter could just about finish a man’s stocking in a 15-kilometer stretch of even, easy walking” (a Swedish woman in her 80s said this in the 1890s), and wondering whether I should have rigged some kind of apparatus to my binoculars to have enabled me to knit while acquiring blisters, when Numenius looked over at me and said “I’m talking to Antartica.”
It was all a bit mind-blowing, for a late Saturday afternoon.
w0000t!!
Wow – how very cool!
Pica – I’m amused at the mental picture of you trying to knit, hike, and bird all at once. (I couldn’t do it.)
Well done!
That is a major DX contact from Davis!
73,
greg