What a thrill.......

Andee’s dream to have a amateur radio station has come true. Students, staff, and university students can converse with the world, especially Europe from the radio room at the Hope House.

In the back of my mind I wondered can we make it happen to talk to the US from Nigeria. Not just to the East coast (which was done only twice during my stay) but to Kansas and my station. That is a long haul and with the low sunspot activity we are experiencing now, everything would have to be at optimum. The antenna would have to be working as advertised and it was over 30 years old. We would only know in time if our rebuild job was good enough to meet the original design specs. We needed maximum gain from the antenna. The cable power losses from the antenna to the transmitter would be a factor as well as the rotor working to point the antenna towards the US. We would need all of the 100 watts the transmitter was capable of to make it to the antenna. This meant there could be no damage in the cable and good connections at the splice points in the 125 foot span to the antenna from the radio room.
During my stay at the Hope House all of Europe was strong and loud. From Moscow to the Mediterranean and all points in between, strong signals were an early indication that the equipment was indeed working well. We received signal reports that were consistently good if not great from almost all stations that we talked to. But I heard very little state side activity when pointed to the US, more reason to wonder about the likely hood of making it work and on a regular base.

Andee and I had decided to try a schedule after I returned to Kansas. A frequency of 21.230 mhz and my local time of 11 AM on a Saturday was agreed to. I made many calls at the appointed hour and frequency but heard nothing from Nigeria. I decided to tune lower in the frequency and listen for any activity that might indicate there was propagation to Africa. On Morse code, I weakly heard a French station so I thought ‘well I can hear Europe maybe there is hope I can hear Africa farther to the South’ I tuned back to our scheduled frequency, pointed my antenna to Nigeria and still heard nothing. It was then I decided to hook up an amplifier that would boost my signal from 100 watts to 1000 in hopes maybe Andee could hear me if I was not hearing his 100 watts. It took all of 10 minutes to get the amplifier hooked up and things turned back on. Then I heard a signal on the 21.230 frequency, and I heard Andee’s call sign, but it could be another station calling him, still no reason to believe it was him. Then the signal became louder and I recognized the voice, it was Andee in communication with a European station!!

I broke in and Andee returned to my call right away, things were working! I got Doris on the phone so she could hear our friends on the other end of the radio. Thomas, Emanuel, and the rest of the staff were present in the radio room at the Hope House to say hi to me, what a thrill. I have been a ham for over 45 years and this ranks as one of my best contacts, better that contacting the space shuttle better than bouncing signals off the moon. We talked for a while and then all of Europe again wanted to make contact with Nigeria and the Hope for the Blind station. I listened to Andee for almost an hour make many more contacts in Europe, all the time with a BIG grin on my face!!!