Swains in Samoa

Back in town.
Three weeks ago I was active in the 80 miles marching event organised by the Belgian army, remembering all those who died during WW I while defending our freedom.   Just great to have 4 days of free time close with nature, history and other walkers and fight against your own limits (the last miles were similar with a WW contest after 40 hours).
This weekend we spend some more time in the same region, visiting the daily last post event with our children. Although this event repeats every day since 1928, it quite impressive to be there and see how many people are present too.

Yesterday afternoon, time to take a quick shack-visit.  Dxsummit was showing American Samoa all the time on my gsm, and I miss this DXCC.
Turned the antennas to 10 degrees and worked NH8S after a few calls... very weak signal and problems with my OMpower ampli.  I couldn't get more than 1 KW output and the drain current was going into red.  I tuned, retuned, changed band, went back, etc... nothing helped. Until I had the idea to check to power lines... damn ! A phase was not turned on.  I use a power connector with a small control lamp, but with the sun shining I hadn't seen it wasn't turned on.
Problem solved.
Second disappointment : NH8S is not American Samoa but Swains Island.  So not a new one for me.... and also in another direction.  This explained also the weak signal, I was beaming to a wrong direction.
Another disadvantage of having too much faith in the dx cluster.

I wasn't that active on the air the last weeks due to all other activities and I finally took the time to clear my big QSL backlog.  All QSL cards are now written/answered and will leave next Friday.

My RTTY project is now in standby mode : I'm waiting to see the possibilities of the new Yaesu FT3000DX in accordance to RTTY (I seems that it contains an encoder/decoder as an option, but I couldn't find more info on the net).  If this isn't ok, I go for the Icom7600 as planned.
I hope that this can be terminated before the WW RTTY contest.

Oh yes, on 15m DXCC 200 has been achieved thanks to KH6.
Next nearby achievement is on 17m where the counter shows 93...