I had been listening for the K5P DXpedition on Palmyra Atol for about 2 weeks. The team of operators had been operating from this tiny island in the equatorial Pacific Ocean, about 600 miles south of Hawaii since January 12. They had been operating around the clock, and were on all of the high frequency (HF) Amateur Radio bands at one time or another. They operated CW (Morse code) and voice as well as radioteletype (RTTY). I heard them a few times, but their signals were always very weak. In fact, I only tried calling them a couple of times because their signals were so weak that I didn’t think I would hear my call sign even if they did answer me.

On Monday afternoon, January 25, 2016, I heard K5P quite clearly on the 15 meter band (21.040 MHz) on CW. Was this my chance? I heard the station give the K5P call sign (always be sure to verify that the station you think you hear is actually the one you want to contact.) I heard them sending the call signs of stations that they heard, along with the signal report and then sending “UP” meaning they were listening on a frequency a little higher up the band. I found the pileup of stations calling them about 2 kilohertz higher in frequency, and set my second VFO for a frequency near where I heard other stations calling them, and set my radio for split frequency operation. When I heard them complete one contact and send “UP” again, I hit the button on my radio to send my call sign at about 25 words per minute – close to the speed they were sending. I tried this several times, but did not hear my call sign coming back to me.

I decided I needed a bit of extra help, so I turned on the amplifier, adjusted the antenna tuner for a 1:1 SWR and then tuned the amplifier. Rather than the 100 watts from my Elecraft K3 transceiver, I was now set to transmit with about 600 watts of power. Again I spent some time listening to K5P, and also tuned around the pileup a bit to see if I could find the station they were contacting. Suddenly I heard TU 5NN, and knew I had just heard the station they were contacting. (TU means thank you, and 5NN means an RST signal report of 599 — R of 5 means the station is perfectly “readable,” S of 9 means the signal strength is 9 on the radio’s S meter, and T of 9 means the transmitted signal has a pure sine wave tone.)

I quickly switched back to listen on the K5P transmit frequency and hit the keyer memory button 1. I listened as my radio transmitted my call sign, WR1B, and then immediately heard “WR1B TU 5NN.” That’s me! I hit the keyer memory button to send “TU 599 CT,” and that quickly it was over! Once I had everything set, and found that station they had just contacted, it probably took less than 10 seconds to complete the entire exchange! Wow! What I thrill! I just contacted the DXpedition on Palmyra Atol, way out in the Pacific Ocean.

This will be a new one for me. I have never made contact with a station on Palmyra Atol before. The operators are sending their logs over the Internet to a website called Club Log, so in an hour or so I will be able to check to make sure my call sign actually appears in their log. (If you decide to follow that link, type in WR1B for the call sign to check, and you will see an entry come up that shows the Band as 15 (meters) and under CW there is a 1. That’s my contact!

In order to actually confirm this contact, I will create an electronic log with the contact information and upload that to the ARRL Log Book of the World website. When the K5P team also uploads their logs to the Log Book of the World, the Log Book software will search and compare our entries. When it find a match, I will receive “credit” for the contact towards any new endorsements to my DX Century Club Award. The DXpedition will also offer a nice paper QSL card, so I will want to send them one of my paper cards to receive this commemorative piece of paper. Collecting QSL cards is yet another aspect of Amateur Radio than can be a whole lot of fun. Looking back through my QSL card collection, there are many fond memories of contacts made over the years that I have been an Amateur Radio operator!

Early that evening I read an update on the DXpedition website indicating that late that night they would be operating on the 20 meter band using voice and looking for stations from Europe and Asia. This was the last night of their operation. The next day all of the antennas were taken down and all the equipment was packed up. The DXpedition is over. It looks like I got my contact just in time. I had hoped to also make a voice contact on one of the bands, but that didn’t happen. Even so, I am thrilled to make the one contact, and add Palmyra Atol to my list of places that I have talked to via Amateur Radio.