9. First station / First QSO

Hi-MOUND key used for the first contact

The certificate arrived in March 1978 and the first cw QSO was in January 1981. The 3-year blank was partly because the works and child rearing, and in the main my shy character which had kept me unresonably hesitant to transmit by pounding the key.

In addition, different from today, the then 7 MHz amateur band was literally bombarded, starting in the evening, by the broadcast stations of China and North Korea as if it was their targets. Consequently the band was useless for the operations after work.

Yet I finally called a station sending CQ in day time. It was a club station of a technical institute in Aichi. This was the first transmission without knowing whether the system really works or not.

It did work right, and immediately the return signal came back! No sooner than realizing all was OK, I was thrown into a real confusion. After erroneously pounding again and again, I finally managed to finish the QSO.

The QSL card for this contact is still at hand, and it reads;
my RST 599
theirs: OP is N san, rig FT-101E, input 180 W, antenna DP
N san, I am sorry to have troubled you at the occasion.