9X5RU from Rwanda worked on 28 MHz - March 2023

With the Irish V26EI expedition to Antigua now on the air, I was wondering if I could hear them? I had a look at the DX Cluster and there was no sign of them when I checked, However, I did notice that 9X5RU in Rwanda was active on CW on 28 MHz.

After a few minutes of setting up the morse key again and the various settings on the radio, I finally managed to work them after several calls.

When I wrote the contact into the logbook, I was surprised to see that my last contact on the HF bands was back in June of 2020.

It's not that I haven't been active, my radio has been decoding either FT8 or WSPR signals on 28 MHz practically every day for the last 3-years and feeding the reports up to their respective websites. It's just that I have no interest in chasing DX.

The CW contact was at 16:24 UTC on the 29th of March 2023. As can be seen from the map above, it was a 7000km north-south path and it's likely it took two F2 layer hops.

The HF propagation website Proppy predicted that my 80w signal from my half wave vertical would be above the noise in Rwanda and it looks about right.

I have no idea if Rwanda was a new country for me or not, I'm really not too bothered. I have no interest in working them on any other band or mode, I worked them on CW on 28 MHz so the box is ticked.

Using morse code is like playing a musical instruments like a guitar, if you don't practice on a regular basis then you get rusty and you get very rusty if you haven't used it in 3-years. I'll have to start using it more.

Link... 9X5RU website.