Worked Special Event Station 8I79I! More to Come?

Yesterday evening I heard a special event station calling CQ on 20m. Though the station was quite strong here, the noise level was also 9+. So I had a tough time making out the callsign clearly. But the operator was very kind and repeated the callsign several times for me, correcting mistake in each letter which I had picked up. Finally I got the callsign as 8I79I and a 5,9 report and I was quite happy!

As usual, a QRZ.COM look up gave much more information. It was one of the stations in commemoration of 79th Indonesian Independence Day. ORARI, the Indonesian Amateur Radio Association was taking part in the Indonesia Award 2024 from 10th to 18th August by making 10 special callsigns based on call areas on the air. 8I79I had operators from different provinces of call area 8 with operations on 10m, 15m, 20m, 40m, and 80m, on SSB, FT8, CW, and RTTY. Sattelite Mode APRS was also available. So I expected more such stations from other call areas as well as on other bands. Though I scanned the bands a little more, I could not get any more contacts with special event stations yesterday, which was also the last day of the event.

I could get a list of other stations as well as confirm my contact by looking at the ORARI Awards page. But to get the award, I needed to work a minimum of 10 stations and confirm them by uploading an ADIF file of the QSOs. Better luck next time! Yet, as always, I was elated to work a special event DX station.