I was very excited to make my first contact with the K5D DXpedition at Desecheo Island.  My first contact was on 17m SSB on Feb 13th. I then made 11 more contacts on different band/modes over the course of their stay and was excited after each one of them.

I had a very easy time making all the contacts with the exception of my 2 RTTY contacts. Those took the longest amount of time to check off my list. For the SSB and CW contacts, I’d be shocked if any of them took longer then 5 minutes of calling. In a couple of cases, they came back on the first call. The only band/mode I tried on that I couldn’t get was 20m CW. Seemed every time I could hear them they were only listening for Japan or EU stations.

Near the end of their DXpedition, I probably could have made dozens of contacts on bands/modes I already had logged but didn’t feel the need to burden them or prevent someone else from making a contact. One contact on each band/mode was plenty good for me.

All the ops I interacted with and listened to were top notch. Some were better at handling the pileup then others, but I imagine it was a monumental task to deal with for even the best operators.  They just did a phenomenal job!

Here are the contacts in the order they occurred and all are confirmed on their online log. I will be using their online QSL request system to get a paper QSL back and they indicate they will upload to LoTW in a year.

Date / Time   Band   Mode
2/13 19:32    17m    USB
2/15 03:45    20m    USB
2/15 11:53    40m    LSB
2/18 15:05    30m    CW   * My first CW contact ever
2/18 15:43    17m    CW
2/20 00:55    80m    LSB
2/20 12:20    40m    CW
2/21 19:40    15m    RTTY
2/23 20:08    17m    RTTY
2/25 03:16    80m    CW
2/25 13:54    15m    CW
2/25 15:57    15m    USB

Thanks again to all those that participated in the K5D DXpedition!

73,
K2DSL