Friday, May 4, 2018

Bet You Haven't Done This: WA1ZMS Has Made Contacts on 30 US Ham Bands

In fact, we'll bet you didn't even know we had 30 different bands available to us!
The ARRL Letter reports that Brian Justin, WA1ZMS, of Forest, Virginia, made a 2200-meter contact in April with K3MF in Pennsylvania to have at least one two-way contact on each amateur band from 137 kHz to 322 GHz. Brian informs us that he has since added a contact on 403 GHz! 
WA1ZMS's upper microwave transceiver. A pair of these
radios (which he built) was used to make record-setting
contacts on 241, 322 and 403 GHz! (WA1ZMS photo)
 
For some of the higher microwave bands, he needed to build two radios and give one to a friend to take to a different location to set up a contact. He used the North East Weak Signal (NEWS) Group standard of one-kilometer minimum separation to be counted as a valid contact. Justin began the effort in 2002 and made confirmed contacts on all bands from 160 meters to 300 GHz within a year. The addition of our two newest bands – 630 and 2200 meters – as well as realignment of some microwave bands, required additional contacts over the years, setting several world DX records in the process, as well as making the first-ever amateur contact on less-than-one-millimeter bands, 322 GHz and 403 GHz.