Surprise Contact with DX Station I Had Worked in 1989!

Today evening I had a QSO with UA9FGR on 21.225 MHz SSB. After giving me 5,7 report, he surprised me by mentioning that we had a contact in 1989 on 40m, CW! Obviously he has a digitized log data back to decades, which I do not. But I know that I have worked several DX stations in those days on CW on 40m and I do have a few QSL cards of those days still with me as a precious collection. It was with my 3 x 807 vacuum tube homebrew radio with 120 W DC input on to a dipole antenna tied on top of tall coconut trees.

Antenna hosting was done by throwing nylon ropes tied to stones over the leaves of coconut trees. To be exact, my radio was a hybrid one, with VFO of the VU2VWN QRP which I had made earlier. The modulator for AM was also a solid state audio amplifier as the radio needed a lot of audio power for plate modulation. Anyway quite happy that I am still there on the logs of my old contacts. Here is a recording of part of our QSO today:

Last year VU2JOS had surprised me by sending a message mentioning that our first QSO on 40m was 38 years back, which corresponded to a date when both of us were on VU2VWN QRP. My RX in those days was a Philips Prestige 4 band vacuum tube BC radio which belonged to my father.