St. Pierre & Miquelon (IOTA NA-032) and "ATNO" explained

Last edited: 03.10.2016

After many tries, tonight I finally managed to work the DXpedition TO5FP on St. Pierre & Miquelon! I worked them in RTTY on 20m.

St. Pierre & Miquelon is an archipelago situated in the North Atlantic Ocean near Newfoundland. It's the only French territory in North America. The official currency on the archipelago is the Euro!
The team of TO5FP, consisting of F4HEC, F1RAF, FK8IK, and F5TMJ, is active from the islet of Ile aux Marins, close to St. Pierre Island. They will be active until September 20th.

St. Pierre & Miquelon is a separate DXCC entity, and is an ATNO* for me, bringing my total DXCC country count to 198 (mixed).

Ile aux Marins (source)

TO5FP QTH and Hexbeam antenna (source)

TO5FP is working with a real time online log which can be found at http://www.a6dx.com/QSO/to5fp/. A screenshot of the log (with PA7MDJ in the "Recent QSO" window) is shown below. Very nice!

*ATNO = acronym for "All Time New One", used by radio amateurs to indicate a brand new DXCC country worked. To the outsider it looks like just another acronym, but in fact it's the radio amateur's "Hallelujah" and is laden with emotion and excitement. Read this article here which explains pretty well what ATNO really means to the radio amateur.


See also:

http://dx-world.net/to5fp-st-pierre-and-miquelon/
http://dx-world.net/images-at-to5fp/