In front of a shortwave rig, today, you only had to pick up your flavor. The JARTS contest, the Jamboree On The Air, and the Worked All Germany contest, plus the ongoing XX9, T30 and 3B9 DXpeditions, provided enough options for a full  radio day. Like it often happens to me, I wnet for a bit of everything. On teletype, I worked my first UA0 ever (UA0AYA, to be sharp), and a couple of UN6 (which makes Read more →

This is an ode to ham radio:

• because it’s been my most intense radio day since I got licensed, working seven out of eight call areas of mainland Australia;
• because I worked VK9X, Christmas Island;
• because I worked for the first time New Zealand;

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Several times I stressed, on this column, how hard is for yours truly to get decent signals from the US. At late night, with propagation doing his job just fine, I experienced best stations crossing the Pond at 5/6-7, on 40 meters. Give me one at 5/8 and I would have red-crossed the date on the calendar.
A couple weeks ago, being an early rising bird, I was exploring Read more →

Yours truly isn’t too much into the Olympic Games hype (exception made for the special callsigns related to the even, which is fun to work), but amateur radio has its sporting side, so title for this post is quite a forced option. Straight to the point, now: I got lately results for Helvetia Contest 2012, held last April, which I was glad to join as a resident in a bordering region, and the proud owner of a swiss Read more →

I think that, in a previous life, I should have belonged to a Signal Corps. Since I became an ham (my 1st year of license recurred in the last week), I’m convinced that a day without a radio on my shoulders is a lost day. But if the radio you’re carrying is a VHF, like my FT-290 IIR, there are a few chances to score nice receptions, or contacts, if you don’t climb as high as possible. Read more →

Any serious DXer can’t forget today is “day one” of the activity from Sovereign Military Order of Malta, 1A0C. Woke up a bit late (7.30 UTC), and at first I got someway disappointed. The cluster reported Giorgio, Francesco, Gabriele and the rest of the international team on 40, 20 and 15 meters. I couldn’t hear them on any of these frequencies, and I noticed a generally high noise floor (I have Read more →