It has been an interesting week so far, received my collection of bureau cards from Los Angeles the other day and I was surprised to see a card from JA7COI for a contact from 02/08/1976. I missed it the first time around, but when I was matching up cards with my logbook I did a double take and realized this was a contact with my father, when he held the call back in the late 1970s.

I e-mailed Ichiro (JA7COI) and explained the situation, “I am pleased to hear that my QSL arrived to you. And, I am surprised that W6ONV in 1976 is your father’s call sign. The attached picture is a search result for W6ONV on my home made e-log. I checked it carefully, and I found we had duplicated QSO on the same contest hi. It shows that I have sent the QSL to JARL bureau on 2008/Nov/19. “j081119/” shows it.“

Ichiro goes on to say, “The reason why I decided to send QSLs for old QSOs is that I wanted to apply to the Yomiuri DX-10000 stations. It needs different 10000 station’s paper QSL including full CQ zones, ITU zones and DXCC. So, I checked my full e-log data since the first day of my ham life. And I sent QSLs for them who have pages on QRZ.com. I am on a half way to the summit now. This is the story.“

I think that is a very unique awards and truly an achievement for any operator to fulfill. I did tell him I would get my dad to initial a QSL card and get it in the post to him, along with mine, which are just a bit more recent on RTTY and SSB over the last two years.

In other ham radio news I am looking at some of the upcoming contests and I am getting excited. Next up is the JIDX CW Contest taking place next weekend. Each prefecture is a mult and with 100 watts working all bands I should be able to have a good contest.

Somewhat in line with the JIDX is and award my dad mentioned to me when we were discussing the JA7COI story. He told me back in the late 70s he was working towards the WACA or Worked All Cities Award sponsored by the JARL. My dad never did mention how many cities he had worked, but looking at my log I have 250 JAs, one of the more heavily worked counties in my log after Canada (336). The JARL currently shows 809 cities (Including 23 Wards of Tokyo). Guess it’s time to start filling out QSL cards for my JA contacts as I would like to achieve this award.

The 7QP is coming at the end of the month as well. Another fun contest I participated in last year finishing 21 out of 41 for high power, all modes. I did not put much time into the contest as I recall, nothing that would resemble a true effort, it was more of a leisurely pace working digital, CW and phone.

With warmer weather approaching and the number of contests I participating in dropping off it will be time to start reworking the shack and fit my antennas, along with adding the 6M on the roof. I was also looking to possibly go SO2R when the new contest season kicks off at the end of 2010. That second rig would end up being the FT-857D I have installed in the truck. More on that as we get into summer.