Easter Island - XR0YG

Between 20-27 March 2013, a team of English hams was active as XR0YG from Easter Island on all bands 160m to 10m (CW only). I was looking for them for 4 days with almost no sigs to be heard for me.

Than I started to look for them in the morning and surpise: there they are. I was simply looking for them too late during the days before and so on the wrong bands too.

Today, between 6:00-7:00 UTC, I was ready to jump into the pile-up crowd on 40m CW. And guess what? After 1/2 hours of following the pile-up, I worked them just a little 1kc up. Super Op on the island! A very big pile-up was calling, however the guy on the other side left the QSX area just around 1-3 up! Perfect operation!

And by the way: It was an All-Time-New-One for me: never worked a station from Easter Island before. The QSO is already confirmed as DXCC country #287 on LotW.

Challenge #1000

It was XT2TT from Burkina Faso ! The QSO dated March 5th 2013 on 12m CW set the magic counter for my DXCC Challenge award to #1000.
 
Since my first DX QSO in 1990 I uploaded 13.000 QSOs to the LotW database and I got approximately 4.500 QSL-matches in the database to reach this fantastic award.

9M4SLL - Spratley Island ... new bandpoint

Yesterday I had a short contact on 12m CW with the team on Spratley Island 9M4SLL. Within 24hrs after the QSO, the confirmation in LotW was already in ! Great job from the team. Thank you!

It wasn´t only a very quick confirmation, but it was also a Big Point: it was my bandpoint #999 for the DXCC Challenge in LotW. I am waiting for only one more confirmation to reach the magic threshold of 1000 challenge points. Who will it be?

TX5K - Clipperton 2013

The DX season in 2013 started with a Big One! A large group of DXers went to Clipperton Island, south west of Mexico in the Pacific Ocean. During their activation of TX5K they made 113.844 QSO in about 10 days! An online tool was available to show the current status where QRV and who was currently worked.

I was lucky and made it into the log on 30m and 12m CW. And this is what the tool looked like, when you just made the contact :-)