This morning it was great to receive an email from Preston, the awards manager from QRP ARCI regarding my application for the QRP DX award. This award is issued for successful communications with 25 ARRL countries while running QRP. Endorsements are available in increments of 25 countries.
Presently I'm now just short of 50 countries where I can update this award further.
Below is my best distance as a MPW Award.
G'day all,
This month had its up and downs in regards to propagation up here in Far North Queensland.
However, there were times when the noise level dropped and the chatter went through the roof. I did manage to get quite a few EU and US contacts, so it was great to receive a couple of QSL cards from them.
Dennis (W7WHO) in the mid USA
Having just joined VKFF and going thru Logsearch, I saw that I was eligible for my first VKFF Hunter Honour Roll certificate for having worked 10 VKFF references. At the time I was chasing other QRPp CW awards and going thru my own logbook, I saw that I had worked all the activators at 1 watt. (QRPp). Thank you to all of the VKFF activators and thank you to Mark VK4SMA, the VK4 VKFF State Rep for the certificate.
Since I last posted, conditions in Far North Queensland haven't been particularly favourable for QRP at times, but every now and then the band opens up.
Early Oct, I managed to have a QSO with Joel (F5VV) in France, which was good. There were other Euro stations (Germany and Sweden on the air at the time, but I just couldn't quite get thru at 1 watt, so I cranked up 5 watts. (LOL).
Anyway.. thanks for the EQSL card Joel. All the best. 73's
It was great to receive a card from Andy (JH2UNG) this morning, my first contact for the month. Typically I go QRPp to Japan, but with propagation not the best at the moment and Andy's signal strength was around 329, I bumped up the power to 5 watts. I just got thru !!
Anyway, at least I got one of the month, so it wasn't a doughnut month.
Hopefully.. next month will be better
It was great to receive eQSL cards from a few of the contacts from last month.
For the month of April (1st to the 30th), I decided to go for the QSO-a-Day award. At the same time I was also going for the KMPW award,so going for the QSO a day award made sense.
During the first half of the month, it was relatively easy as propagation for "local" and DX was great. The band were hot up here in Northern Australia. However during the last week, propagation began to fall apart. It was tough just trying to get a contact, even at 5 watts.
Anyway, after much perseverance and at times frustration, I managed to get there.
One of the things I find quite amusing is when Europeans talk about all the DX countries they've contacted in just a few hours. If you look at the picture below, is it really DX?
Here in Australia... its called " LOCAL".
Some of these EU "countries" are equivalent in size (or even less) than some our local Council Shires or county's in Oz
Now I'm not being cynical here, but it does make you realize that Australia is one BIG country from that perspective!
Anyway....My QTH is between Cairns and Townsville near the top right of the image below,
As propagation was not the best for QRP during 2023 in regards to any MPW awards, here I only managed to get 18 MPW awards for the year, ranging from 500 milliwatts to 3 watts. It was a struggle.
However in 2024, propagation picked up and on April 1st, I
decided to make a real effect to make 100 QRP MPW contacts.... all at 1 watt.
By the end of the first week of April, I had made 48 contacts and by the end of the 2nd week of April, I was now up to 73 contacts. On April 20th, I had finally crossed the threshold and made 101 QRP MPW QSO's, earning the KMPW award.
I decided for the month of April I wanted to crank down to 1 watt (QRPp) and see how many contacts I can get on each band (10m down to 40m)... just for fun and a challenge.
Everything outside the circle is a QRPp 1 watt 1000 MPW award
One of the programs I like to use to see if I'm getting out is the "Wideband Shortwave Radio Receiver Map (http://rx.linkfanel.net/). This way I can tell how far and how well received I am around the world or locally. Great tool.
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All contacts are done by either
1/ Calling out "CQ"
2/ Answering a "CQ"
3/ Hearing a QSO taking place which is about to close and on doing so, I give my callsign, hoping they hear me
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Anyway, here's my results so far (updated 12th Apr 2024)
Scanning around and with nothing really happening on the CW side of things, I thought why not have some fun and go SSB. Going up to 10m, I heard Philippe (FK4QX) booming thru as a 59+ from New Caledonia.
Anyway, I decided to up the power to 30 watts for something different (I could have gone 100 watts) and he came back with a 55. After swinging his antenna towards me, we ended up chatting for about 15 minutes about the usual and then comparing our monsoon wet season (he's basically on the same latitude as me except 800nm to the east). Rain, Rain, Rain as we're getting.
Anyway, it was great to get a card from him also
Thanks Phillippe
