First radio contact with Australia / 2017-12-24

A special first for me: an amateur radio contact with Australia, with VK3EW who seems to be a serious DX chaser. For me, this is almost the other side of the world.

This was an FT8 contact, which is a digital mode specific for making contacts with very weak signals using the minimal exchange of information to have a valid contact. I think the neighbours have heard my happy shout after I saw the first response come back to me. The exciting part was making it a full contact complete with signal reports exchanged.

The distance of this contact is 16581 kilometers! The scaling of the generated maps at PE4KH amateur radio has been adjusted to make this contact visible.

Update: It's clear VK3EW is also very willing to help other DX chasers. I spotted him on the DX cluster with

14075.0 VK3EW de PE4KH thankyou FT8 new country

and he replied via the DX cluster network with

14074.0 PE4KH de VK3EW qsl lotw ok
14074.0 PE4KH de VK3EW FT8

which was a clear message to me to log the contact to LoTW as an FT8 contact to get it confirmed. Which I did and the contact is indeed already confirmed digitally. I will also send a qsl card via the bureau.