Yesterday, Wednesday 23rd October, 2013, I saw a SOTAWatch spot from VK2DAG for Austrian station, OE4JHW, and that he was looking for VK/ZL.  So I went up to the radio room and turned the radio on and tuned to 20m.  And there he was…..Juergen, OE4JHW, on SOTA peak OE/ ST-252, with an excellent 5/8 signal.

Juergen was initially working other Europeans, but within a minute or so, he again asked for VK’s / ZL’s, so I gave him a shout and got through straight away with a 5/9 signal report being returned back to me.  I quickly respited Juergen, and soon after I did hear Mal VK3AZZ get through.  Not sure how many other VK’s managed to work Juergen, but he certainly had a very good signal here in the Adelaide Hills.

And then today, thanks to an initial sms message from Larry VK5LY, I managed to work Ivan, VK5HS/9 on SOTA peak, VK9/ NO-001, on Norfolk Island.  Ivan was initially calling on 40m but I couldn’t hear him at all.  I then saw him re spotted on 15m so I had a listen there, and got through to Ivan straight away as there were no apparent Chasers.  Ivan was 5/5-7 with QSB and he returned the same signal report to me.  There weren’t many chasers for Ivan, so he and I had quite a chat, and Ivan got out his video recorder and filmed a bit of the QSO, as did I at this end.