January started off slow, but things picked up with several individual cards showing up in the mail. Then my first batch of bureau cards in some time. I also got word that I have an additional 80 QSL Cards at the bureau waiting to be mailed to me.
The Columbian Island of San Andres lies in the Caribbean Sea not far from Nicaragua. It’s far enough away from Columbia so that it counts as a separate DXCC entity. I worked HK0/PY7RP on the 10M, 12M and 15M bands using both CW and FT8. The FT8 contact was made from my home station.
I’d worked the North Cook Islands in the Pacific Ocean a number of times in the past. But the E51D DXpedition allowed me to rack up some new bands and a new mode. I worked them on 40M through 10M using both CW and FT8. The QSL Card is also interesting given the RIB (Radio In a Box) equipment used to remotely control the station from a ship offshore.
Germany is not rare. But I’ll include this QSL Card from DK6XY because I love QSL cards with historical sites on them. This card confirms our 20M FT8 QSO that I made from my very modest home station. Working Europe from my California station is not the easiest of tasks for me.
You don’t hear Andorra on the air that much. I’ve only made contact with two different stations from the country in all of my years of operating. This QSL card from C37NL confirms a 40M contact using SSB.
I made contact with two stations in Kyrgyzstan in the 1990s. But I never obtained confirmation, a bad habit which had cost me dearly in the past. So I was happy to make an FT8 QSO with EX0QR on 30M. And this time I made sure to get this QSL as soon as I could.