CQ Birthday, CQ Birthday, CQ Birthday DX

happy birthday to me. i'm old. how do i know i'm old? well, i don't seem to be able to sleep through the night without getting up once or twice to pee (yes, yes... drinking a quart of water before i go to bed probably isn't helping things, but i like to live dangerously!)

so i got up a bit before 3am, california time, and looked at the sunspots/A/K reports and thought, 'hey... maybe i'll be able to snag a bit'o'dx... cranked up the HPS-1a power supply, fired up the K3 and there was PY3PA (Brazil), calling CQ... kind of noisy, i tried replying a few times (and could hear a bunch of other folks replying without success, too), but no luck... damn crappy antenna ain't worth shi....wait... who's that on 7175.0? JO7CVU, Sendai City, Japan... hell, my Japanese is better than my Portuguese... JO7CVU, robin desu... Hajimemashte... yah, back when i was a kid i was the first in-house Chief Intellectual Property Counsel for Sony and spent a lot of time in Japan... 私はピザを買いたいです (I would like to buy a pizza - very handy phrase - no charge!)

so i began the celebration of my 52nd trip around the sun reaching out with a brief contact with the land of the rising sun on a day when trans-pacific communication was made possible (using my damn crappy antenna) through the magic of sunspots.

all auspicious omens for the coming year (or perhaps just a reminder to wear sunscreen!)



Happy Birthday to Me and Happy DX to All!
73
de Robin (W6RDG)

(oh yeah... here's a pano of my 'crappy antenna' - lol - a buddipole vertical with a 10ft telescopic mast, single coil, and two extensions mounted to a VersaTee attached to the top of a 16ft fiberglass and aluminum painter's pole, and a single sloping horizontal elevated 'counterpoise'... its too near the power lines in the backyard for real quiet, but apparently its good enough to order a pizza in japan!)