Ampli tubes are warming up

I didn't power-up the tx since a number of months.  As always, no time - correction - other priorities
that prevented me to go to the shack.

On Monday, after a holiday weekend outside the qth, the shack was cleaned up (the huge amount of OJ0V cards were everywhere on my desk) and the ampli put on.
But I missed the important window of 7-8 hr utc to work both K9W and T33A.  Damn, I needed these two entities since I missed the previous Banaba expedition some years ago.

This morning I left our qth and went quickly to my shack-qth to make (try to make) the two needed contacts.
T33A was only available in rtty on 20m, and I do not have equipment for rtty.  K9W was on 15m cw but only eastern Europe was heard.  After an hour, the signal got stronger and I started to call.  Very difficult because the operator was sweeping frequency all the time.
I have had a lucky moment (power helps a lot) : he took me out of the pile-up via the long path.  New dxcc worked !
I even had double luck : some minutes after my qso, the well famous European zoo woke up and qrm was made on the call-frequency.  K9W couldn't do anything else than go to ssb.

What a shame ! Again and again, expedition after expedition...

Is this the reason why T33A was working JA and W and not Europe ?  Anyway I had no possibility to hear T33A, and I had to go to qrl...

In a very last effort, I could make a second qso with K9W, this time on 12m ssb via the short path.

Steppir is very nice instrument to play in this kind of conditions.  Quickly band change, instant lp/sp change.

To be continued....