A Yankee Sunday

This Sunday was a Yankee day for me as far as ham radio is concerned, and not because I have made many QSOs with the United States. The main reason is that the three QSOs of the day were with stations whose callsigns started with Y, namely YO8THG, YL3FT, and YC1FWO.
I was driving to a house my father has in the countryside just in order to collect a solar power generator that I intend to use with my Clansman PRC-320. A fellow ham (Ernesto, EA1LQ) convinced me to switch on my station in the house and try my favourite band (15m) on both SSB and CW. He looked at the cluster and told me that some Indonesian stations had been spotted on that band.
YO8THG (Geo) from Bacau was the first contact. As he was only working with 100W in SSB, this QSO gave me an idea that the propagation was not bad at all. Then I decided to move to CW and made a QSO with the fellow Yuris (YL3FT).
But the achievement of the day was a QSO with the station YC1FWO from Indonesia (operator Syarif ). I had to wait for quite a bit on the pile-up but it finally paid out. 13,000km is a good record.
Syarif graduated from Padjadjaran University Bandung in 1990. In 1997 he got a Master's degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign (UIUC). Now he is working as a govt employee and sometimes teaching Economics in a university.
He became a member of Indonesian amateur Radio in 1983 (when he was in a high school) and since then he has been active on the air.

Senegal

Last Saturday I made three brief qso's from my car, all of them in 15m with a 4m-long whip antenna. Two of them with South America (Uruguay and Brazil) and another one with Senegal (6V7S).
Senegal is a country south of the Sénégal River in western Africa. Senegal is bounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the west, Mauritania to the north, Mali to the east, and Guinea and Guinea-Bissau to the south, and it also encircles The Gambia on its three sides, except that of the Atlantic Ocean.[4]
Its size is almost 197,000 km² with an estimated population of about 12.5 million. Dakar is the capital city of Senegal, located on the Cape Verde Peninsula on the country's Atlantic coast.
Archaeological findings throughout the area indicate that Senegal was inhabited in prehistoric times.

The Gambia: the country number 60

I have also received an eQSL from a QSO with the colleague André (C56YK) on 15m. The Gambia represents country number 60 for my eDX100 award.
The Gambia (officially the Republic of The Gambia), commonly known as Gambia, is a country in Western Africa. The Gambia is the smallest country on mainland Africa, bordered to the north, east, and south by Senegal, and has a small coast on the Atlantic Ocean in the west.
Its borders roughly correspond to the path of the Gambia River, the nation's namesake, which flows through the country's center and empties into the Atlantic Ocean. Its size is almost 10,500 km² with an estimated population of 1,700,000.
On 18 February 1965, Gambia was granted independence from the United Kingdom and joined The Commonwealth. Banjul is Gambia's capital, but the largest conurbation is Serrekunda.

Yesilkoy Lighthouse: YC1YLH

I have just received this nice eQSL from a short SSB QSO with Yesilkoy Lighthouse in Istambul, Turkey. This represents my country no. 59 validly confirmed via eQSL.

Yeşilköy (prior to 1926 known as San Stefano or Santo Stefano from the Greek: Άγιος Στέφανος pronounced Ayos Stefanos, rendered in Turkish as Ayastefanos, Bulgarian: Сан Стефано) is a part of the Bakırköy district of Istanbul, Turkey. It is located along the Marmara Sea about 11 kilometres west of Istanbul's historic city centre. Before the rapid increase of Istanbul's population in the 1970s, Yeşilköy was merely a village and a sea resort.

Clansman PRC-320

I have just ordered a Clansman PRC-320 from England. I am looking forward to receiving it.

I also ordered a hand crank generator. I plan on using the set on the amateur bands so I will keep you informed.