My Famous Japanese 10 Meter sideband Contact

I don't think I've told this story before.


 This was back in 1970 when I was a senior in a public high school.  I went to school half days because I only needed one credit to graduate so I took three classes just in case but left at 11:30 since my first class was at 7:30 in the morning.  So I spent my afternoons working 10 meter DX with a 3 element triband yagi up about 25 feet and had a blast.  Japan, back then, had 4 levels of ham tickets and the novice version of their listen was 10 watts on 10 meters only.  I worked hundreds of Japanese stations over the years, probably thousands, and after 40 years plus of DX operations, I wouldn?t be surprised if I had close to a million DX contacts if you add up all the DX contests and all that I worked.  Anyhow, 10 meters had tons of Japanese operators since that was the low powered novice band.  It wasn?t unusual to work a 10 over S9 signal from Japan, running 10 watts, and a 10 element, wide spaced, huge 10 meter mono band beam.  So keep that in mind as I tell this humorous story.  You had to be there.

 So it is mid afternoon.  I drop down to about the bottom 10 KHz of the 10 meter phone band, swing the beam around to the northwest, and call CQ on side band.  A Japanese station calls and I answer.  Now, keep in mind that I have never been very good with foreign accents.  That?s probably why I like CW DX more than side band.  Anyhow, this guy is running 10 watts and a big beam and is S9 into Denver.  He starts asking me questions, which I can?t seem to understand, but not wishing to be rude, I ask him to repeat and repeat and repeat.  First, he asks what city.  I tell him Denver but had to make him repeat his question about 10 times.  Then he gets it across, after several repeats, do I really live in Denver or a suburb.  I got it so I said, Lakewood, which I had to spell a couple of times using phonetics, of course.  Then he asked another question which I didn?t understand so he repeated it a half a dozen times until I realize he was asking for my address.  Oh, good, I think.  He wants to QSL direct.  I give him my address.  Fortunately, it is all numbers except for the word West 6Th Avenue.  Then he asks another question which takes several times before I figure it out.  His question was, what is your cross street.  Boy, that was a difficult one to understand for me, too.  I told him the cross street was Car, spelling it, like you drive.  You understand?  He comes back, happy as he can be, and says, Oh, so good.  I have map.  I see exactly where you live on map.  Is this ok, and he repeats my address and cross street.  Wow, what a dedicated ham.  Of course, now, guys just pull up google and focus on your house from the sky.  Sort of takes the fun out of getting to know someone from another country.

Phil.
K0NX