St Petersburg Russia R1DX

It was almost noon before I was able to get on the radio today and I considered myself very lucky to hear R1DX in St Petersburg Russia calling on the 12 meter band. He wasn't spotted on the cluster, and was 599 into West Virginia. Out there all my himself, and in the clear, he answered my 3 watt signal on my second attempt, we shook hands and moved onward to other stations.

Breakfast this morning was with my friend Eric (AC8LJ) who also lives in Charleston and is a good QRP CW operator. We meet once a month to talk about QRP and the happenings on the bands. I then rushed to the shoe store to have an old pair of shoes repaired, dropped by the county library to return a CD, and then drove to the local hunting and fishing store where I bought a new "slingshot". Afterwards, I made a stop at the hamfest site where I checked with the "building and maintenance" people to make sure I could get on the roof of the building to attach a 17 meter dipole on Saturday morning.

I'm going to use a 50 ft. length of coax to set up my station on Saturday morning. I hope it will put me far enough from the metal structure of the building to assure an effective radiating antenna. It's not a very good place to operate QRP but, then again, my home location isn't the best in the world, and I do a good job of making contacts. I hope I'll be able to do the same at the hamfest.

My intentions are still, to make a daily DX contact with whomever I hear on the 17 meter band, and then to use the keyer in my rig to call CQ on 18.096, which is the QRP frequency on this band.

I'll be on the air from around 1300 GMT  till 1800 GMT. 

This mornings contact with R1DX was my 9th contact into Russia, and, as the crow flies, 4,637 miles in a straight line.