First of August began well, with 1A0C finally logged on 10m for a new slot. The Sporadic E cloud was hopping all over the place, and their signals ranged from nil to +00 over several minutes, and I wasn’t able to hear any of the callers, which made finding a clear QRG difficult. Having failed a few times, I thought “OK, one last go”, and they called me back with a report! Thankfully, the Es stayed there long enough to complete the contact!
On the morning of the 4th, I was woken up early (for me!) by a lot of noise outside, and couldn’t get back to sleep, so I made a coffee and played a bit of radio on 17m. Managed to work KH6, KL7, ZL and a couple of VK7’s, plus a host of JA and Europeans. The last contact in the log was my number 120,000th QSO on the bands for that morning, and takes my 2023 tally to 6244 QSO’s, with 210 DXCC worked this year.
Over the weekend of the 5th/6th August, our club (Guernsey Amateur Radio Society – GU3HFN) were putting on a stand at the Vintage Agricultural Show with special call GB5VAS. However, severe gales and torrential rain prevented us from attending on the 5th. Thankfully, on the Sunday morning, it was bright and sunny, and the wind had died right down. Had a great day, and got some interest from a few locals…. Also, during the show, our local Lions Club president invited us to put our stand up at the local Donkey Derby on Saturday 19th, which we did, and used GB5DD. We were all set up by 10am, but it was a slow start, as most of the activity didn’t start until after 1pm, but we had some very serious interest in the hobby, so we can only hope that between this and GB5VAS, we encourage even one or two new people into the hobby, it will have been worth it.
2 more entities added to the CQ Marathon tally as of 21st August – FM5GB on the 20th on 10m FT8, and KH0/KC0W on the 21st on 17m FT8. Now standing at 212 DXCC this year, with almost 6600 QSO’s made in 2023. This will indeed be a bumper year for contacts.