Early morning at the beach

 

Up early today.  Another sub-zero day, the sixth in a row this week, but skies were clear.  I decided to head down the beach on the east coast of Anglesey to see what signals might waft in.

20m wasn't looking very promising, so I tried 17m on FT8, there being nothing much happening on SSB. The usual stream of JA stations came in quite nicely, with good strength signals.

Sub-zero temperatures, but a lovely morning at the beach, facing east.

Up on 15m a few minutes later - it was still only 9am - and there was plenty of action from Russia and, on 21.250MHz, ZL4RMF was coming in at around 5/3, but strengthening. There was a slight but distinct echo, indicating simultaneous long and short path reception or, more correctly, given ZL's position, antipodean focusing multipath.

The 'shack'. FT8 on 17m to start with.

I made a quick video of the QSO before I made a successful call to Ron - not bad with 50W PEP and a stick antenna plus, of course, the considerable environmental gain from the seaside location. Ron even greeted me with a perfect 'bore da!' (good morning!), which is something I get a lot more from the other side of the planet than from folks across the border with England!

First JA of the morning. One of several I eventually logged.

 

With Ron and a few Siberian SSB QSOs in the bag, I felt very happy with the brief beach visit, which lasted less than an hour.  Here's to the next one!