So it's late afternoon on the West Coast US and ZD9PR answers my FT8 CQ on 17m. I gave him a -18 and he gave me a -19. He does not appear in any of the databases (QRZ, HamQTH, Clublog, ...). Pskreporter showed he was spotted in Australia and California just now. https://dxheat.com/db/zd9pr/ shows a single spot from Japan last month. Seems too good to be true. Anyone know anything about him? 73, Mike KK7ER
MIKE, I KNOW THIS IS NOT THE INFO U ARE SEEKING BUT ZD9 LAND SEEMS TO BE A VERY INTERESTING PLACE . https://dxnews.com/ZD9ZS_Tristan-da-Cunha/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tristan_da_Cunha ZD9AH ' Ulli ' - DL2AH Tristan da Cunha ZD9ATN SIMON (aka IZ7ATN) GADALETA SOUTH ATLANTIC OCEAN ZD9BV ANDY REPETTO TRISTAN DA CUNHA - SOUTH ATLANTIC OCEAN - VIA CAPE TOWN ZD9SXW Roger Western, G3SXW Tristan da Cunha ZD9T Dieter DJ2EH AF-029 ZD9XF Nigel G3TXF South Atlantic ZD9GI John McLinden TRISTAN DE CUNHA 73 - K1LKP
Oh, I know it is an interesting place! That's what makes me hope (against the circumstantial evidence) that this was a real contact. : ) 73, Mike KK7ER
If it seems too good to be true............ If the callsign was legitimate, there would be a record of it, and an internet search would find it. My guess would be that it's a pirate.
Dennis, that is my suspicion too. But information can require time to propagate, especially when very small and remote governments are involved. It could be that a ham happened to be visiting for other reasons and decided to get licensed and operate. It is probably wishful thinking on my part. But, I actually did that myself once and got accused of piracy on the air! 73, Mike KK7ER
Mike,... ZD9ATN, ZD9SXW. ZD9XF, and ZD9GI all have email address listed on their QRZ page. Being such a small group in such a small place, I'll bet one /all of them can confirm/deny the existence of ZD9PR. Shoot off an email to one/all of those ops & see what happens. Steve / W5BIB
Steve, I like the way you think. But it looks like these are all the QRZ pages for past dxpeditions, the latest one being 2014, 7 years ago. I wonder how connected they would be to current day happenings in ZD9-land... 73, Mike KK7ER