And a lot happened in the past year. After 6 years in Bangkok (HS0ZLE) and 6 years in Vietnam (XV9Q, XB9BPO) we finally came back to live in France with my wife and 2 kids. We arrived on December 22nd. We were installed in Geneva for the first 3 months and then moved in a house beginning of March next to Swiss boarder.
Thanks to the help of F8KCF, Annemasse Ham club, I was able to mount an Ultrabeam VL2.3 which I had in the boxes new since Thailand (more than 8 years) on my Prosistel Mast at currently 10.5m above the ground.
The station has improved also. As soon as I arrived in France I bought a Power Genius XL to have the full Flex/4O3A line for SO2R.
Current working conditions are:
- Flex 8600 (Flex 6600 as well)
- Maestro C
- Tuner Genius XL 2×2
- Power Genius XL 2kw
- Antennas:
- Ultrabeam VL2.3 @ 10.5m above the ground
- DX Commander Classic with 80m i/o 30m which is covered by the UB VL2.3
- Antenna Genius 8×2
This has helped me improved drastically my DXCC count as I added around 49 new DXCC from France reaching now 249.
When I arrived in France in December 2024 I had in my log around 3000 QSOs overall from France while having my license since 1997. Which means only a few contacts were made while living in France. I am almost reaching 10,000 now thus 7,000 QSOs were added in the past 9 months.
I have been working on a few projects since I am now in France such as a program I have been developing lately and which I will discuss in a separate post. Also the CQ WW SSB is coming in a week and I will do it with a new Contest team TM3P, I will also discuss about it later.