I jumped on 20 meters tonight in search of some DX and tuned across the dial at least a dozen times before I heard PT2CM calling CQ out of Brazil, roughly 4,000 miles away. I got a 57 signal report and responded with a 58.

Earlier in the evening I scanned 20M and ran across what had to be a split frequency pile-up. I heard about a million folks sending callsigns over two nearby frequencies, but never heard the original operator causing the jam. Argh.

Right now I’m listening to a slightly ornery QRP operator who called CQ on 40M — On 5 watts, he has a rather loud signal into the south, and a lot of guys are trying to work him. At any rate, there are lots of static crashes on this portion of the band, and his signal is quickly fading out.