Temporary deletion

Submissions to QST () require that articles not be printed anywhere else.

If rejected I'll put an expanded version here otherwise it'll be seen in QST

That right there makes it all worthwhile!

What a good story. Ham radio at its best.

Amateur Radio, Fuck Yeah!

That is so cool!  I can understand tearing up when he made the contact.  Things got kinda dusty when I finally got my 100th country yesterday.  


Vulcan94

Great story.  Ready to hear it on SCWolverine's podcast!

That is a great story!  Thanks for sharing!

Thanks for the extra effort, real nice of you.

Nice job getting it done!!  

Email patch...welcome to the new idea...good jorb!

ham radio feelgood thread of the month, homie.

congrats on making it back alive from your IOTA expedition. get yourself hydrated after all that time on the dry island.

Gettin' it done. Good job.

Glad you guys worked it out! Amateur Radio rocks!
I've done a similar thing when stealth camping in a national forest with my dual sport motorcycle. There was no cell phone signal in the area and wanted to have a QSO with my dad who lives in Eastern Europe. 20m band was wide open into Europe. I was running my FT857 at 30 Watts into a G5RV Jr. antenna and I also hung a Ed Fong foldable VHF/UHF J-pole on a rope, about 40 ft in the air.
I could not hit any repeaters with a handheld radio but 50Watts into the J-pole opened the repeater I needed. A friend of mine always monitors that repeater. I had him send a text message to my dad telling him the frequency I was on.
About half hour later I heard my dad on 20M band calling me. He was running a kilowatt into a 4 el cubic quad, 100 ft above ground. Obviously he was loud and clear (59+) but it took us several tries before he could hear me because of QSB and high noise level at his QTH. He gave me a 5/5 report. We had a nice chat for over 30 miutes. We could have talked longer but he was getting ready to go to work. I made lots of nice DX contacts that evening.
It felt a bit surreal.  You know, me sitting in a tent in the middle of nowhere and talking to my dad 6,000 miles away with nothing but a small radio running off a small battery. I love this hobby!