Suriname 1 - 0 Iraq.
You may or many not know that YI9PSE are now active from northern Iraq. Well, I mentioned this DXpedition in an earlier post back in February and today was the first chance I’ve had to try and work them. Suffice to say the pile-ups were huge and it was hard work!
Suriname in South America |
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I have heard YI9PSE today on 20m SSB at anything from strength 1 to strength 9, on 17m SSB between strength 1 and strength 7, 30m CW between strength 1 and strength 9 and 30m RTTY (all too briefly) at a consistent strength 7 to 9. Despite all of this I have been unable to crack the pile-ups to get a contact. There are MANY stations calling YI9PSE and they are reporting EU stations at 30dB over 9 with them! One UK station had been trying for several hours and he was told by YI9PSE that he was 10dB over 9 and was still hard to hear under the EU wall of signals. I suspect my puny signal will only get through once the pile-ups thin out after a few more days of operations. |
But, there was some consolation in the form of another all time new one worked in the form of PZ5RA (Ramon) in Suriname on 17m RTTY. I’d been trying to work YI9PSE on 30m RTTY but he’d gone off air before I could snag him so I QSY’d to 17m where PZ5RA was good solid copy with me. Working simplex he was getting through a steady stream of EU stations but he wasn’t hearing me. Luckily he soon moved to working split and within 10 minutes of that I was in the log for country number 176. Now…let’s see if I can log YI9PSE before they’re all done.