General condition at a glance

In the early morning, east coast stations can be heard as well as signals from Japan working with DXing although it is a midnight over there. When the SUN comes up, W7 and XE and W5 becomes stronger.

At noontime, propagation is limited to W6; however, every station is sounded like a local station.

I find it is the pass of QRP station.

When people toasting a wine, QRM is getting heavier. This is the 7MHz of what I know in Japan. Unfortunately, I have not heard any European and African stations with my PIXIE2 yet.

Contacting Japan with PIXIE2 made me think surviving in the ocean with a small boat. Japan is way far away to be reached by my tiny PIXIE2. Each bounce with the ionosphere makes my signal weaker. We need to set a proper strategy in order to make this happens.

First of all, I have to understand the propagation. Since my experience was only limited to the one of 15m band, I listened 40m band day and night to understand the best propagation with Japan.

Several days past, I figured out that the band opens from 11PM PST to 8AM PST, which are 4PMJST to 1AMJST respectively.

The first station that I listened to was JA4EKO working with South American stations during WWDX contest (phone). He uses 4 element Yagi on 40m and running a linear amplifier. So, it does not give me a confidence to listen to the signal of 10W station from Japan.

The major break through was when I heard a domestic QSO in Japanese in the evening time of Japan. A station said, " I am using Kenwood TS-530V..." Bravo! It's a signal from 10W station.

On a day, I found JR1GMK calling on CQ. Then a station from W6 replied his CQ. It was RS579 to 599 and very stable. I stand by for a while until the QSO finishes. I felt like waiting for a long time.

Soon after they keyed 72, I send "de W6/JJ1SLW" several times. Got no reply.

I bypassed 1000pF (refer to my radio page) and tried it again. Then, I got;

QRZ?

Oh my god! And keyed my call sign twice momentary. But,

There was another station calling CQ on the frequency. Damn it!

Finally it comes

My business made me apart from the radio for a while. On top of that, a storm prevented me to go surfing, which is another my hobby. Naturally I had no other choice but to spend a day to listen to the radio.

It was a day of ARRL CW contest. Many JA's can be found in the morning. It was so unusual.

JA1YXP called on CQ with extraordinary signals. I used to compete with JA1YXP when I was a student and suddenly remembered my days in the contest. So, I listened to them for a while and called.

After my several attempting, I got several "JJ?" but never got a complete call sign. Then, I felt bad if I bothered him for his contest and stopped it.

I also found JH7DNO sending his contest number of 599010. This implied he was operated a 10W station. So, I called him like a crazy. He QSYed 2kHz to avoid QRM. After 15 minutes of my trial, I could not make the contact.

Then, it was happened at 8:24AM on February 21.

I found a station-calling on CQ just below JA1YXP. It was JA6SHL. I replied his CQ 4 times. Then he replied "AGN" twice. I called my call sign twice.

Then, he replied with my full call sign.

It was the biggest surprise even greater than when I went through a pile up of HK0M. I got a contest number of 599500.

It was a moment of making a successful QSO with Japan with a distance of 9000km by just 20mW.

Review

Needless to say, this remarkable achievement was made with a extraordinary effort by JA6SHL to listen my weak signal. In addition to that, timing of QSO was a key to success. This is what I found after the QSO.

The best pass between the countries is from 0AM to 4AM PST where there are heavy QRM due to domestic QSO. QRM can easily block QRPp signal resulting no copy at their end.

We know by experience that the propagation during the contest is amazingly better than that of everyday.

Luckily, this extended the pass open until the late midnight in Japan so that JA6SHL could listen to 20mW signal without a bothering.

Anyway VY TNX to JA6SHL. You are my hero!