Have you ever had one of those days?
We're at T -10 days and counting to the wedding of my only daughter, Samantha, and the stress is starting to get to me. Tonight, I had a delivery at the house, just as the pass for FO-29 started. I could hear the driver honking his horn outside the garage door, just as I heard a station calling CQ on the bird.
I went back to the station, "M3Y slash something"...hmm...strange callsign. Didn't quite catch it. But no worries, I always use a small digital recorder to catch all the audio from passes. Haven't quite mastered adjusting the rotor, twisting the RIT knob, keying the mic, and logging all at the same time.
Certain that the recorder would capture the details, I proceeded with the contact. "QRZ, QRZ this is N1LF EM63 QRZ".
Hey wait, he's coming back to me. What's that he's saying, "Try it again, N1LF". I repeated my call and grid square. The station came right back again, "Try it one more time. Are you on the right sideband?", A wave of panic set in. I glanced at the knobs on the IC-910. Was I on the right sideband? What was that callsign again? Where the heck is that? South America, maybe!!??
I repeated my callsign---he came right back. "OK, now I got you". He sent his grid square too, but the bird rotated, and I missed it. I doubted the recorder had it either--so I asked for repeat. I noticed other stations were quickly calling the DX too. He calmly repeated his grid square and I sent a quick "73".
The horn outside honked again--breaking me from my euphoria. I scribbled a quick note of the time; 04:05 UTC. No problem, I'll get the rest from the recorder when I'm done with the delivery. I yanked the headphones, and listened as other stations worked "Norm". They all seemed excited to log a rare grid. I was proud of myself for finding him early in the pass, before the pileup had started.
"Maybe this rookie can show these space jockey's a thing or two" I thought, in my self-assured inner voice. I greeted the driver with a big smile and firm handshake.
An hour later, I plugged the recorder into my computer's USB port, and opened the file in Sound Forge, ready to play back the pass, and fill in my log. Alas, you can guess the ending to my sad tale of woe. I had neglected to plug in the splitter cable!!! The entire file was completely BLANK! NO!!!!
So, I hate to ask, but I decided to swallow my pride and see if the gang could help me solve this mystery. Who did I work, and where the heck was he? Gotta get automatic rotor control working and start writing stuff down.
Serves me right for being cocky. Despite the setback, I'm still having fun learning the birds.