My QTH is located at the bottom of a valley between mountains. I operate on 70cm band, so I rarely hear CQ calls. However, I occasionally hear CQ calls from mountain mobile stations. Incidentally, there is no activity on 2m band at my QTH.
Yesterday, Tuesday, December 2nd, I heard one such CQ call from JS3MXP at an altitude of 645 meters on Mt Rokko, 45 km from my QTH.
From an altitude of 645 meters on Mt Rokko, my QTH could not receive direct waves, only mountain diffraction waves, so the signal strength was around 3.
JS3XMP was using a “doggie antenna” and operating at 10 watts. I set up a 5-element Yagi antenna on my apartment balcony and attempted to respond to CQ calls at 5 watts.
The photo below is a quote from a photo posted by JS3MXP at https://js3mxp.hatenablog.com/entry/2025/11/29/135039.
JS3XMP communicated with around 80 stations between 7:00 PM and 11:00 PM, and I tried to respond to his CQ around 10 times, but I was unable to reach JS3MXP.
What was the problem? Was it difficult to communicate over the mountain diffraction waves with JS3XMP’s 10-watt “doggie antenna” and my 5-watt 5-element Yagi antenna, or were my calls overlapping with the calls of other stronger stations?
By the way, JS3XMP is famous for making beautiful handmade antennas.
The photo below is a quote from a photo posted by JS3MXP at https://js3mxp.hatenablog.com/entry/2025/10/12/094009.
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