Nice Christmas Present 2018: New ODX on 2m EME

For many months I had been watching for stations from Oceania via EME. From Germany contacts to New Zealand for example are possible only in a small time window in which the moon is visible from both locations simultaneously. At my location mountains and buildings to the east reduce 2018-12-24_zl2mqthis window even further to a possible slot of abt. 20 minutes. In addition there is much groundnoise noise at those low elevation angles at moonrise.  So bad conditions at all.

The moon was in a favorable position on this holy evening, December 24. Moonrise was around 19 o’clock and a very little activity from european stations. Watching the N0UK-EME-chat I saw that ZL2MQ from RF80km called CQ on 144.133 MHz. Let’s see if he could be copied with my single 14 element antenna. And yes, today everything fits: no big guns from Europe were on, low ground noise and also Faraday played along. To make the story short: Five minutes later the QSO with Dave was in the log and thus not only a new DXCC on 2m, but with 18.298 km also a new ODX. What a nice Christmas present and an evening to remember!