Our QRP beacon continues to reach way out there. In the past 24 hours we’ve been picked up by WA2YUN, Colin Bradley’s station on Wake Island. That is 9116 miles from here. These long distances always amaze me. It is doubtless the sophistication of the equipment, transmitting and receiving, that make them possible.

Yesterday morning I was working in my office with the radio on, scanning through 20 meters when I heard a station in Australia. I paused the scan and responded to his CQ. VK3MO, Ian Williams came back from 80 kms northwest of Melbourne.

Now QSO’s in Australia are not that unusual from here. My rather crude dipole antenna seems to work well off the ends on 20 meters. Since the antenna is aligned east and west, I get fantastic propagation those directions, not very good north and south.

VK3MO was using a very sophisticated antenna as you can see in the photo. His 20 element Yagi on a 200 foot tower has tremendous range as evidence by our QSO. He was beaming long path to me, shooting across the pacific, across North America, across the Atlantic, across Africa to my little station.

Now it is possible he was picking me up from the back end of his antenna. Given the clarity and strength of our signals, this might have been the case. He was 59 here in Uganda, He gave me a signal report of 59+10. Anyway you slice it, it was a great contact.