It was getting late last night but fascination and excitement took over having some very nice QSOs around the world. A snapshot from the HAM Logbook:
2200 UTC, 7163kHz, LSB:
– DL7MDB / Stefan / Madeira 
– DL7MEF / Franz / Augsburg 
– KE1Y / Rolf / New Hamshire 
– HK3JCL / Lothar / Colombia 
2300 UTC / 14162 / USB:
– V3CWB / Mike / Victoria 🇦🇺
– K2UQT / Tom / New York 🇺🇸
Although the propagation forecast was not that promising for these connections it worked surprisingly very well. On the 40m band (7MHz) I took little help of WebSDR Lisbon but the 20m band (14MHz) was extremely clear in both directions, Victoria/Australia and New York/United States. I was literally speaking sitting in the middle of Mike and Tom but that is perhaps a matter of perspective. 😅 Nevertheless I got R5 and S7 reports from both of them. R5 stands for “Readability”and means “Perfectly readable”and S7 stands for “Strength”and confirms that my signal was received “Moderately strong”.
Stefan came in with R5 and S9. Being based in Santa Cruz on Madeira, it was a nice coincident to connect the two Santa Cruz between Portugal and Spain. The connection was loud and clear at both ends, which surprised me as I am hiding behind some 900m high mountains towards the direction of Madeira. Perhaps the signal travelled the long way…who knows?!? 🤔
The testing will continue.
Fair winds…
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