I heard W9ZN calling CQ on 7.035 and he had quite a strong signal, so I turned on my HFPacker amp and answered him with my FT-817. He gave me a 559 and said it was armchair copy on his FT-1K and ground-mounted vertical in the Hyde Park Shore area of Chicago. Bill was running 1KW from a home-brew amplifier!

It turns out that on my one trip to Chicago in junior high school, I went to the Museum of Science and Industry which is only 4 miles from Bill's QTH -- I thought I recognized the area from the name and he confirmed it. Mapquest says it's 2.8 miles away! Not that I have an encyclopedic knowledge of Chicago...

We had a nice long QSO and I hope to work Bill again. Bill got his ticket at 13 and was in the Navy by 17 doing CW!, and so he was very kind about my rusty CW. Even though he is right handed, he was practicing sending with his left hand on a J38 most of the time...it was better than my right!

- posted by Leigh @ 06:11 z