802.11 and Cellular - True Convergence?

The pile up

I was fairly new to Ham Radio and lucky enough to have a good friend who was willing to help me "learn the ropes" as it were. In my first year of having my General license I was offered the oppportunity to do something really extraordinary. I was asked to go to the Island of Dominique and DX from there. It was an amazing experience. I had traveled around the Carribean a fair bit but this island was new to me and was a bit more of a remote experience than what I was used to. However I had a great place to stay, it was a one room shack out in back of a main house but the shack was surrounded by a quaint garden of native flowers including bouganvelia and other climbing flowering vines. The building did not have glass in the windows nor air conditioning but did have a nice breeze that flowed through most of the evening and was well kept and airy even in the heat of the day. I arrived at the airport and as is customary had to show my temporary radio operators license for the country as well as explain the equipment I was bringing in and the frequencies I would be using. All of this had to be arrange months in advance and sometimes deplending on where you go is quite tricky. After all, you have to apply for a radio operators license in a foriegn country and this can take time and effort. But it was all worked out and correct for the immigration and customs people and I was allowed to proceed with my two suitcases crammed full of radio gear and antenna's.
I set up the antenna and radio in less than 4 hours and with a little twitching and fiddling with an extention cord from the coffee maker, (everything was 50 Hz 220), I was able to convert and plug in a 110 outlet for my radio, power supply and PC, Magic!
I had carefully placed my log book and my pencil, fly tying kit for the expected boring times and everything else close at hand and was ready to go. I had managed to make one short QSL with someone in Texas and my radio seemed to be working well, therefore I was looking to talk to a lot of people that day. What happened was incredible, I was CQing and waiting for a reply when I talked to a guy who posted my call sign and frequency on a well used DX spotting site. I guess I had not realized that Dominique was a fairly desirable QTH because all of a sudden I was innundated with request for QSO. It was my first real experience with a pile up, which is what happens when you have so many people trying to talk to you at once that it is really tough to identify an individual operator to talk to, basically everyone talks over each other in a rush to get a QSO before the band changes and they cannot, or you cannot, hear each other. This was so frantic that I actually experienced some pile ups that went for over 6 hours without stop. I talked to over a 1000 different people over the course of 4 days of hard radio work. It was great fun. I made a lot of mistakes but everyone helped get me through it and everyone was patient and well mannered while we worked as many people as I could. I would wake up at 8am get on the radio at 8:30 and would not stop until 2:30 am. a fairly exhuasting schedule. But one that was worth every minute of it. In the end my ears were sore from the head set, my voice was tired and I was plain worn out. Great Stuff! I would do it again in a heartbeat. I talke to 1000 people in over 70 countries and the furthest was antartctica and China, Australia. Lots of Europeans and Russians as well as Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.
Truly a wonderful trip and one that I will remember forever.

Kd5ydn