The last 5 of the 200 countries I was after

Niue

Marshall Islands

Angola

North Cook Island

Fiji.


I bagged Niue both on voice and CW. It's a major DXpedition

The Marshalls I bagged on CW via a nice Japanese lady that was there on some sort of vacation. It was a mess but we connected.

A man in Angola has me in his log and vice versa following a real CW melee on the 17 meter band. The pileup was a real mess of dits and dahs as everyone was walking all over everyone else.  WHen the smoke cleared I emailed him and he had gotten my call sign straight so we're in each other's logs properly.

The North Cook Island contact was an anti-climax on 17 meters. It was a voice contact and basically I sniped him. I saw him on the on-line clusters, tuned to his frequency heard him in a whisper and then ran a propagation prediction and saw he was on the upswing. I waited and did a few things in the basement.

Sure enough when I came upstairs he was strong enough to work and the pileup was very small. I just sat down in front of the rig, threw out my call sign once and he answered it. We swapped calls and signal reports and that was that.

Fiji was a case of being a scheduled QSO. I heard him one night on CW and tried to no avail. I did make out his call and then I emailed him and asked him he he'd do a Sked. (Scheduled meeting on the air) He was willing and for the next two mornings we tried chasing each other until I finally made it into his logbook.

I do believe that all of these will QSL me. Niue will be the last one to send me a card as it is a major DXpedition and things take time.

The Fijian told me that mail theft is rampant and to make the card look as unhamlike as possible. I put my card in a lovely powder blue envelope and put a big, red lipstick kiss on it. It SHOULD get to him.

When these cards arrive I'm going to play hell organizing them. I have to get an ARRL printout to see which ones I have used for my DXCC and which ones are my second hundred.

There is no separate award for this. It's been a personal project.

Pro tip: Lighter fluid on a Kleenix takes lipstick off one's lips nicely. If you're careful you don't taste too much of it.



To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY