My journey to 5BWAS ended at 1050 UTC (5:50 AM Local Time) Jan 26, 2014, when Les Buchholz sent CQ on 3.577.269 MHz. Six minutes later, signal levels of -14 and -16 were exchanged and confirmed, and 73 send round trip. A few minutes later, a journey that had started in October of 1970 had ended. Something that I had read about as a young Novice, and wondered if I would every be able to accomplish had become real.
I would be bragging if I said this was a random happenstance, but it wasn’t. Les was gracious enough to answer an email and setup a schedule for 0500 UTC this morning. Then he was more than patient to watch me try in vain to copy his signal over and over again (he was hearing me just fine most of the time, and I could see him on the waterfall, but no decodes).
For more than an hour and a half, Les offered me words of encouragement, suggested some alternatives, and followed me around the JT65 “band” as I tried to find a sweet spot. My repetitive failure was turned into a wonderful experience as he shared stories of his life and photographs that would put any nature show to shame via email. Les said he would try again at 1100 UTC, that grey-line sweet spot, if he could somehow manage to stay awake.
Perhaps tired from my day of driving back and forth to Boston to visit my son, and with a sense of defeat, I went to bed and somehow convinced myself that I was to get up in two hours. Of course my mental math was wrong, as that was 0900 UTC, but I gave it a try then too. Les wasn’t around then, so it was back upstairs for another nap, until I came back down and set down in front of the screen at 1050 UTC, exactly when JTAlert announced “CQ. New State. New Country. New Zone” I shook my head, glanced at the screen and saw that Les was calling CQ.
Les sent this to me via email…
And a minute later this appeared in LotW…
A short while later he sent the following chart showing what was going on with the magnetosphere this night/morning, explaining why things had been so tough:
Our earlier attempt at a contact had happened right as a fairly large magnetic “upset” had occurred, which results in rather nasty absorption over the polar region. You can see that things had moved from Quiet, though Unsettled and into Active as the magnetic field jumped up to > 200 nanoTeslas. Starting right before 1100 UTC things had calmed back down, and like magic KL7J and WB4SON were able to make a “post-enhancement” contact.
Les is a perfect example of what makes Ham Radio so wonderful — a chance, and frankly honor, to meet someone who goes out of his way to be friendly and helpful. Thanks Les. This 5BWAS is for you too!
