On Saturday 22nd, Sunday 23rd, Monday 24th, and Tuesday 25th May 2021, Marija VK5MAZ and myself had the special event callsign of VI100AF for 4 days.

We operated from home on Saturday, Sunday, and Tuesday. At home our operating equipment is a Yaesu FT-2000, and 100 watts. The antenna for 80m is a home brew dipole, inverted vee. The antenna for 40m is a rotatable dipole at 55 feet. And the antenna for 10, 15, & 20m is a 5 element yagi at 50 feet.

On Monday I activated from the field – activating a park and two HEMA summits.

Over the 4 days we made a total of 557 QSOs on 15, 20, 40 & 80m SSB.

A total of 35 different DXCC entities were worked.

• Antarctica
• Australia
• Austria
• Balearic Islands
• Belgium
• Bosnia
• Bulgaria
• Canada
• Canary Islands
• Cayman Islands
• Croatia
• Czech Republic
• Denmark
• England
• European Russia
• Germany
• France
• Greece
• Hungary
• Italy
• Malta
• Netherlands
• New Caledonia
• New Zealand
• Panama
• Poland
• Puerto Rico
• Romania
• Slovak Republic
• Slovenia
• South Africa
• Spain
• Switzerland
• Ukraine
• USA

On Saturday and Sunday afternoon there was a nice opening on the long path on 20m into Europe. The callsign proved to be very popular, with some very big European pile-ups. Unfortunately there was no opening at all on Tuesday to Europe.

We also logged a sprinkle of USA and Canadian stations, along with two stations from Panama (HP6DJA and HP6LEF), NP4A in Puerto Rico, and ZF1DM in the Cayman Islands.

Pedro NP4A was a huge signal on 40m.

Despite the callsign having been on air since 1st March 2021, there was a a nice steady flow of callers from Australia and New Zealand.

A number of former RAAF personnel were logged. This included:

• Frank VK1VK
• Tony VK3CCM
• Wayne VK2DWP
• Ron VK2MU
• Bernard VK3BFH

Overseas former Air Force stations who I spoke to included:

• Gerry W5RJJ
• Jack FK8GU

Jacques ‘Jack’ FK8GU and I were 15/9 to each other on 20m and had an interesting chat. He is former French Air Force.

I worked John VK4VT using a former RAAF transceiver, a Racal TRA906, which was another interesting contact.