Made a QSO

I was making (again) some changing's in the operating position at the shack. The "radio" table has two sides and a center place, the left side is for the not so used equipment, the center for the computer and the right side for the operational equipment. Now decided to change the layout; the left for the commercial equipment in the center stays the computer and on the right side will be all the homebrew stuff....being say that, I removed the FT-102 from the right side to the left side to get some space for the "Speaky" when it's finished, the FT-102 occupies now the space left by a Swan 270 (we have almost the same age :).
Anyhow, decided power on the Swan just to see if it was still working (never had made any qso since bought).
After some tuning I was listening to "9A500AA" station (500 Croatian islands) a special call of 9A2AA, somewhere around 14.210Mhz (I calibrated the dial via the built marker generator). The tube output tuning was only made in reception to a 17m band dipole). I know this works and it's safe for short qso's.


Above the temporary operation position...

Made one call... "9A500AA" answered another station call, made a second call and guess what... he returned my call!!! I just exchanged signal report and wished him good DX. It looked like my first qso since my last one according to the log was 29/6/2008 with "OE2008S", that makes 2 years and 3 months without hitting the PTT!
I was hopping making "this" qso with a homebrew radio.... maybe next one!