2322 miles. 3737 kilometers
Pete Juliano and I were talking on Skype yesterday evening. He was regaling me with tales of the wonders of his new beam antenna. He mentioned that he was working a lot of East Coast stations... Wait a minute, I thought, I'm an East Coast station. And I have a 20 meter rig sitting right in front of me. "Meet me on 14.190 Pete!" It took me a minute or so to get the rig connected to the CCI amplifier and the 20 meter dipole. By the time I got everything fired up, there was a station on the frequency. I thought we'd lost the spot. But no! I realized it was Pete calling me.
This was extremely cool. Pete was using his ZIA rig with the brand new beam. I was on my VFO BITX20. And I was using the CCI amp that Pete had coached me on (he taught me how to tap the holes for the heat sink).
This was the first time I had ever contacted another homebrew SSB station -- and the first time Pete and I had spoken on the air. THE RADIO GODS WANTED THIS ONE TO HAPPEN!
I recorded the QSO:
http://soldersmoke.com/n6qwn2cqr.mp3
I will ask Pete to provide more detail regarding the California end of this QSO in the comment section below. Did you have your amplifier on Pete?
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