I am so happy to report over here that #74 DXCC on 60m band CW only I worked few days ago on 22/7/2017. How it was achieved? ...hard but finally done.
I tried to hear George, DU1GM for several days on 60m band and sometime I was able to copy his sigs on JT65 around 5357kHz. As I am operating CW only I asked for QSY to CW and our trials has been started.
Unfortunately propagations was against from the beginning...
When I tried to call George on desired frequency at around 19Z I was a bit surprised that he was able to hear me but it was very hard to copy my sigs and mainly I did not hear from George more that just few beeps in high noise at around S5.
Simply I had still lot of light outside so in my opinion it was too early for my QTH unfortunately.
After that I realized that I am using the short vertical towards the dipole at 20ft on the George's side. George is having also the choice of the vertical and dipole antennas but it looked like there is no gain from the vertical usage so we decided to use dipoles on both sides mainly cause of lower noise level on these antennas.
Also we had to postpone our trials a bit in order to gain more from my Sunset in QTH so we started at around 19:30Z next days.
Unfortunately the noise level on my side even using the Inverted V dipole at the center of post stamp lot garden about 10m high was still around S3... so it was nightmare to copy sigs from DU.
I decided to prepare for another day special configuration of my QTH. I switched all equipment at home OFF by main breaker and tried to listened just using the battery powered K3 and external RX loop antenna Mini-Diamond, W2PM.
Bingo, I was able to read sigs from George, DU1GM at my QTH and copy him enough for trial QSO. The problem was that propagations has changed a bit down and my sigs were copied by George really hard.
Even although George suggested to postpone all tests again for next day (he had 4:30 local time...) I tried to call him again and again.
I was really surprised when I got the call back and copied his report. I copied his 419 for me for the first time but I was not sure with that so I gave him my report and asked to repeat my RST again.
For second time I copied his 419 for me quite clear and at the peak I copied his regards as same as 73 and both call-signs at the end of our QSO. So I repeated the same from my side and his third part for me was again readable perfectly. I heard even the well known and commonly used friendly "dit dit" at the final.
My god, I worked Philippines on 60m band using my very moderate setup even although George is using just low profile dipole and WRC-15 horrible power limit...!
When we postponed the time of trials to 19:30-20:00Z we reached the SS/SR gray line phenomenon on both sides so it helped a lot I guess.
Many thanks to George, DU1GM for his effort and excellent operating skills. My DXCC #74 only CW on 60m worked...
73 - Petr, OK1RP
.../-.-
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