The long and short of it

This is not a POTA story... but I found it interesting and felt compelled to narrate it here anyway. Most amateur radio operators cherish their DX contacts; they are quick to brag about their furthest contact. But the bands do not always play nice and sometimes produces results that can be quite surprising. 

The other day I was working on 17m CW and was happy to have a QSO with a Bulgaria contact.  DX contacts are not rare, but they are not very frequent either for my station. I was running CQ on the frequency and terminated the contact when a '8' station chimed in with their call sign. I did not respond initially thinking they might be trying to work the DX. They repeated their call. Since I did not hear the DX call back, I chimed in asking the station if they were trying to work the DX station. Surprisingly, they said they were actually looking to work me. So we got the QSO going and found out that the caller lived about 10 miles away from me. We had FB QSO and chuckled about our rare 17m contact. Sure enough I have more contacts on 17m to Europe than in my own state...

A little while later I hopped on to 40m CW to ride the golden hour for propagation. A '5' station responded to my call. During the exchange I was surprised to find that this station lived less than 6 miles from me. This piqued my interest and pulled up the QRZ. What I saw made my jaw drop. This contact was my riding buddy from many years ago. We had lost touch with each other. I was not a ham at that time, and therefore did not know that he was a ham too. He had moved in to Michigan from the '5' land years ago. So I went on with the QSO and told him who I was. We reminisced our rides in the past and had a fantastic QSO. We have decided to meet up again for coffee and talk radio in the next few days.

So the next time the bands are short, do not despair. Who knows what surprises it may hold.