[amsat-bb] Extreme DX FO29 Contact

[Dave Swanson]

Satellite friends and colleagues,

I'm happy to announce that at 1732UTC on August 27th, 2015, A QSO was 
made between myself, KG5CCI, and F4CQA on Satellite FO-29. This was not 
a scheduled contact, I simply answered Christophe's CQ call. I knew it 
was a good contact at the time, but as I was portable up on Arkansas' 
Shinnall Mountain, I did not have the resources available to calculate 
distances. After returning to my office I began to log the contacts I 
had made, and noticed the "general" distance between EM34 and JN17 was 
in excess of 7500km. About the same time I came to this realization, my 
email chirped with a message from Christophe, who had came to the same 
conclusion.

After some quick exchanges, and verifying 10 digit locators, we have 
settled on an official distance of 7599.959km between my grid of 
EM34ST11TL and Christophe's grid of JN17EA22OT, using the 
http://no.nonsense.ee/qth/map.html website for calculations.

To the best of our knowledge, referencing data found on Amsat-UK's 
website ( at http://amsat-uk.org/2015/05/06/uk-texas-extreme-dx-contact/ 
) this breaks the previous distance records of 7537.799km between W5CBF 
and G4DOL, and the 7538.685km contact between K4FEG and DK1TB.

I had my camera setup to record the pass as well, and you can view a raw 
clip of the contact here:

https://youtu.be/orY0Re0IY30

If anyone has any questions about the contact, I'll be happy to answer 
them. Special thanks and a solid *GOOD-DX* to Christophe  for the 
contact, and here's to many more.

73!

-Dave, KG5CCI