30m: 8J1RL - Antarctica - KC90 - Worked

 

30m: T6AA - Afghanistan (ATNO)

 My first time working Afghanistan on any band.  Using my new 30m junk-box 1/4 wave vertical.  When confirmed this will be my 99th DXCC country on 30m (confirmed).  I checked today and I actually have 132 worked on the band, but I'm missing quite a few confirmations apparently.  I never QSL for HF normally...so I guess that's bound to happen.  Anyway seeing and working T6AA was a major thrill for me!

(woot!  there it is....one more please :-) )

30m - "and now...for something completely different!"

(24 hrs of 30m on this new antenna)

A few days ago I decided instead of just turning my radio's off for the whole winter as I have in the more recent past 20+ years, instead I would try to fill gaps in my HF DXCC.  I spoke to a good friend of mine K1CP (Clif) asking him abound suggested antenna designs for 30 meters (10 Mhz) among other things and he suggested that I do a simple "1/4 wave Ground Plane".  These are nice and simple, and don't even require any matching network.  So in the course of about 30 minutes I raided my junk box and gathered enough bits and pieces to put something together.

Another 1 hour later and it was done, and hanging in a tree outside my Ham Shack.  

Now I started out with 48 DXCC on 30 meters, all done with CW from year gone by whenever I happened to feel like getting on HF.

It's now been 24 hours and I actually pulled an all-nighter.  I stayed up 36 hours working DX on 30m using this new antenna.  My DXCC count is now up to 92!  Confirmed.

Here's a few pix of it as-is.

BTW I added an HF Choke at the bottom so I could tune it up on 40m without getting RF in the shack.  (it doesn't seem to work so well on 40m tho!  I think when I get to 100 confirmed on 30m that I'll just extend this antenna another 10 ft and work on 40m!)