HAM RADIO Live: How many countries will answer today?

HAM RADIO Live: How many countries will answer today? Who will hear my call today? New Caledonia? South Africa? Or Chile? Or maybe the signal will once again end up somewhere nobody expected it to reach. Sometimes the whole band suddenly explodes at once and the radio turns into complete chaos. And all of this happens with: 100 watts, a mobile HF vertical balcony antenna in Nice, France, and a ham radio station that occasionally behaves like the laws of physics are completely optional. Some days the band stays quiet for hours. And then suddenly New Zealand appears out of nowhere. Every CQ can either disappear into the noise… or suddenly cross half the planet. And yes… One day, something happened on this station that even I still can’t fully believe. But to understand that story, you’ll need to keep reading. ⸻ CQ DX… This is F4WBU. Blind ham radio operator from France. No scripted content. No “perfect YouTube.” Just real radio: weak signals, pile-ups, SSB contacts, HF DX and operators from all over the world. Nobody knows in advance which country will end up in the log today. In the morning the band may suddenly open toward New Zealand and Ecuador. During the day propagation often shifts toward the USA and the Caribbean. And by evening the signal may suddenly disappear into Indonesia, Japan or French Guiana. Sometimes I have to pull a callsign straight out of the noise. And sometimes the band opens so wide that it feels like half the planet is calling at once. Sometimes propagation opens for only a few minutes. Miss that moment — and the entire opening disappears again. I mostly operate SSB on the HF bands. Band conditions constantly change throughout the day. Because in radio you never really know what you’re going to hear five minutes from now. ⸻ Operators from all over the world regularly gather in the chat: Europe, Asia, Oceania, Africa, North and South America. So if you hear the stream — drop your callsign or simply your country in the chat. Sometimes people stay here for hours. Sometimes they just leave the radio running in the background. And sometimes a sudden DX pile-up turns the entire band into madness. Right now somewhere out there another station is also calling CQ DX. The only question is: will we hear each other today? ⸻ Ham radio has a legendary award program: DXCC — 340 countries and territories. And yes, I have a simple plan: activate all of them. If a country can’t hear me — I go there. So far there have already been: Monaco, portable activations, and many more still ahead. Maybe Corsica. Maybe a tiny island in the middle of the ocean. Or maybe a place that’s even harder to leave than it is to reach. ⸻ Now about that story. Ordinary evening. 100 watts. Mobile balcony antennas. First came Kuwait. Then the Canary Islands. Then Canada. And suddenly Australia answered — and at that moment I realized the band had gone completely insane. Then came Portugal. And suddenly I noticed: 5 continents were already in the log. Only one remained. I started running across the band searching for South America. Found Argentina. Called. Called again. And right at that moment the station disappeared. Then the stream itself died — the laptop battery was completely dead. So I simply placed my phone in front of the transceiver and kept listening. And then a friend from Brazil suddenly appeared on frequency. He answered me on the second call. That’s how on July 4th, 2025, this station somehow worked 6 continents in only 3 hours. Sometimes propagation stops feeling like radio. It becomes something closer to magic. ⸻ Ham radio adventures continue. More DX. More propagation. More radio stories from the airwaves — and far beyond them. Become part of the adventure: [link here] ⸻ Welcome Bienvenue Добро пожаловать Benvenuti Willkommen Bem-vindos أهلاً وسهلاً स्वागत है ようこそ 欢迎 Selamat Datang Selamat datang ⸻ Equipment / Station Setup Yaesu FT-891 100 watts MFJ mobile HF vertical antennas from 80m to 6m F4WBU — Vitaly Nice, France ⸻ Today propagation decides everything. See you on the air. 73!