He invited me to the Azuay radio club meeting next week at the house of HC5T. The house is just outside of the old city centre of Cuenca, a world heritage monument.

About 8 people showed up. 3 Fausto’s
First we went in the shack of HC5T which I called (not polite) a museum! See the pictures. And all his radio’s are still working, Jaime is still transmitting (70cm up to 40M, no room for 80/160). Multi time winner in CQWW-SSB en -RTTY SO2R.
The house of HC5T is very very nice, big rooms, big kitchen. Not only we had some drinks (cuba libre) but also great local food. That’s very different from our ham-meeting in PA!!

No buro-qsl-manager (no buro in HC) but all cards are via HC5VF direct.
Fausto distributes the cards and in a official meeting is also decided if the qsl is valid for the special Azuay radioclub qsl (see qrz.com for info).

Before and after the official part, it was talking radio. Most hams in HC5 are only on SSB. Most of them have no space for topband. But some are very active on HF and 6M also in PSK&RTTY. HC5AI Pablo is working some cw, but his father did much better he said.

The club is not growing anymore, influx of young people is nearly not existent. Same as everywhere, why use radio when you can use skype? HC5NRF is the latest  new member.

I explained about my antenna at home (4 el SteppIR) and also about working split. When I worked VF and AI they were not split which creates a big mess (Italians) and slows down qso rate significantly. So maybe next time?

The meeting was still on when I left…..

Some pictures

Yesterday 10-11 we had such an event.
Heard G4SWX working into OH, UA1 and ES early in the evening. Up to 2000 km! And here…nil.

But later in the evening the pipe came down into JO33 and signals were picking up:
OH1ND, SM4GGC, OH2K, RA1AC(KP50!), OH5LK (new #) and ES3RF were logged.

Now closing the station, of to Ecuador  for business.

Worked 40 zones and more than 150 countries. In total more than 600 qso’s for 1/4 million points. No exact numbers because the N1MM logger was broken

Worked in the High power Assisted section but most of the time used 1/2 power on the PA about 400 Watts. But sometimes needed full power, especially with the last zone 1 (Alaska). Worked a lot of JA’s and W’s for 3 points.

Great weekend thanks for all qso’s.

But why complain? For the low band this is perfect. My 80M inverted L only has 4 radials but tuning is perfect. And with the help of Sunrise propagation I worked TX7M Marquesas Island this morning. My first zone 31 qso on 80M!
Still hoping to work T32C on 80M but up to now no good signals. Best time 05 and 16 but no luck yet.

Meanwhile working TX7M on many other bands, only missing 40M now. Amazing, yesterday 6 qso’s on 5 bands with them.
I’m listening a lot before making a call. Many times they are listening outside the ‘window’ they are announcing: ‘up 5-20′ but they are at +25.
Same pattern with 3XY1D.

Last week I received qsl-cards for J8/ and J3/PE1IGM, printed by LZ1JZ. Good printing quality and well packed so no damaged edges. Like!

East Kiribati T32C very good expedition, always on the band and always good signals.
Cocos Keeling not to far away but still needed on 10M. But with this active sun no problem to work them.
South Cook Island on 12M. Tahiti on 12M. A35CT on 15M RTTY. C21UF on 20M.
All DX to the North giving problems in the house with RFI sometimes. Have to crank up the tower some more…

Guinea always with strange calls now 3XY1D but good signals on 80M – 10M. Worked them on 30-12-10. Sometimes gone instantly, lot of power problems there!

But the big one this week is Marquesas Island.  But up to now rather disappointing, signals are far below T32C/signals. On the cluster there are complaints about this.
But this morning I heard them on 30M cw high speed and 20M SSB. And worked them on 20M in a huge pile (audio clip). En een uur later op 30M cw (clip).

Hopefully some more slots coming week. And in the CQWW SSB.

Yesterday VK0KEV was on 17M (LP) and I was lucky because he was working split (most times he is not split >>> ZOOOOO), which gave me another new DXCC. 2 new ones in one week.

I ordered a lot of things at SteppIR-USA, and they finally found my email after 5 weeks so now shipping starts. Hopefully no VAT charges when entering Euro-zone then I’m a lucky guy….

I’m selling $1-notes at € 0,77 if you need some please email via qrz.com

Meanwhile some expeditions were and are running. 4W East Timor I missed most of the time because of holiday. Rotuma Island and Eastern Kiribati are on now but quite difficult to work over the pole.  The higher frequencies are OK (20-15-12-10 meters) but 30-40 are noisy and fluttery signals. EU-windows are small as these islands are nearly antipods of PA. Just worked T32C on 30m, and with the N1MM feature ‘Record QSO’s’ on the recording is automatic, no extra mp3cut or other software necessary. T32C on 30m.

Now 305 DXCC (HR), but the number of DXCC countries is still increasing….

80&160 not qrv yet because the farmland next to me is still in use by cows. Hopefully before the end the month with the CQWW-SSB the cows are back to the stables and I can put 80M for some multipliers.

Back to the set, more to work

I bought a Flexradio 1500, 5 Watt out and built-in soundcard. I had a (small) hope that the built-in soundcard would diminish the load on the laptop. But on average the CPU of the laptop was above 50%, to much to do proper keyboard CW.

I ordered the fastest PC, i7-quadcore. It is really a beast!

But now had to move all my stuff to the new PC. And Win7-64-bit-Pro is different than Win-XP on a lot of things, for instance the treatment of the soundcard-users.

But after a lot of tweaking, especially with RTTY (using MMTTY) I’m up and running. Installed PowerSDR (application for Flexradio) yesterday and the CPU load is below 5%. What a difference!

Last weekend I worked OM3KII on 2M for a new DXCC. After the split of OK into OL and OM I never worked that country, missed them on tropo. But in the contest conditions were fair to good (qsb), worked a lot of OK-OL’s in JN79, SP in JO80. Heard some OM’s but sundaymorning heard OM3KII and worked them in a qsb-up period. DXCC 56 including deleted (Y, OK).

As QSL-manager of (J3-J8)PE1IGM I want to say again (see also on qrz.com): Harm is working offshore, but inside the boundaries of the countries. So he is using his callsign correctly but not all managers will accept his qsl-card for awarding (ARRL-DXCC, IOTA).