On the other side of the pile-up...

After a long break (12 years !) I have been on the air again for six months. Since I do live in Paris, I had to apply for a French call-sign. First tries to work with a multi-band vertical from my small terrace in the city centre of Paris were immediately blocked by the neighbourhood. Once applying the strict French law and getting help of the president of the REF, things look better now and I should be on the air again from Paris starting in March 2003. The only alternative consisted in erecting some antennas at the weekend house about 200km away from Paris.

It was also from my weekend qth that I had a short contact in the pile-up with DL4NCF/HI9. When checking his qsl info on the internet, I came across his nice home page. After some e-mails it turned out to become a fixed idea: Why not combining a Caribbean winter (xyl-view) with some radio activity (ham-view). Only 5 weeks later - but after plenty of letters (hopeless), faxes and e-mails with the Dominican Regulatory office, we were in the plane and upon arrival in Santo Domingo we collected the license. From the capital in the south we had to cross the whole island to reach our qth on the north-eastern part of the island. A beautiful house with an impressive 7-ele logperiodic at the mast was waiting for us (me). The only ham luggage to bring was my Icom 706 with Heil Headset and Laptop. The equipment was carried in a beach bag - not interesting to any customs

Apart of having spent a wonderful holiday away from the very touristy south and east coast, it was really exciting to be for once on the other side of the pile-up. After a short learning phase (first time operation with vox, split, etc.) I was pretty pleased to make 2 to 3 qsos per minute in the pile-ups.

Some highlights:
*) Evening pile-ups to the west, US west coast mixed with JAs: antenna direction San Francisco was the same than Tokyo
*) VQ9, ZL, A6, A7,..
*) Long 40m pile-up to Europe

Some statistics:

During the 8 days of vacation I spent always some time before and after the breakfast (about 12UTC) and late in the evenings on the radio. The time around sunset was reserved for drinks at the bar, hi.
All together, my first hf-operation counted for 1400 qsos.

For hams who are hit by a similar virus please contact me by e-mail for further information about HI
guenther.trummer@alcatel.fr

Vy 73 de F5VHQ/HI9, John
CDXC 1126

Photos :

A small village away from tourists

At the pile-up

Typical landscape

House with antenna - or the other way round ?

No tourists - yet !

73 de John