[Moon-net] The adventures of PA2DW

[DW Harms]

Moonnet de PA2DW,

Yesterday I attempted to work PJ4EME. I was really surprised to see that
their signal was a good -24 dB but I could NOT DECODE it with JT65b....
So I just kept calling, hoping the system would eventually pick out the
message, but alas!... My problem turned out to be that PJ4EME was not in my
call3.txt database!

This made me wonder about the functionality of JT65b. I mean, I had the deep
search off and still JT65b needed the call PJ4EME to be added to the
database to decode the message? That should not be the case I would say.
When I did turn on the deepsearch, the system replied with "*" and that
makes sense. It means "I see a message, but it does not match PA2DW PJ4EME".
But how on earth can JT65b refuse to decode a signal of -24 dB, wihout
having PJ4EME in the database? Perhaps Joe can shine his light on this.

Any way, this nice adventure ended in a very strange way. Still calling
PJ4EME, suddenly I saw my power dropping and at that very moment someone
ringed the door. It was a little boy and his father, telling my antenna had
caught fire and that one part of it was "launched" and now layed on the
street in front of our house. That was my dipole... and still being partly
on fire!
So that means my dipole has some "RF-power limit" that I did not encounter
before hi!! It could also be that the dipole was too badly damaged in the
storm of last januari and had developed some mechanical weakness.
Next week I will pick up new dipoles at I0JXX's stand at Ham-radio, so all
will be fine again soon...

VY 73, Dick PA2DW