Dave Swanson, KG5CCI, of Little Rock, Arkansas, and Christophe Lucas, F4CQA, in Trouy, France, appear to have set a new contact distance record on the FO-29 satellite. The contact occurred on August 27 at 1732 UTC.

“This was not a scheduled contact,” Swanson explained. “I simply answered Christophe’s CQ. I knew it was a good contact at the time, but as I was portable up on Arkansas’ Shinall Mountain, I did not have the resources available to calculate distances.”

Later he realized that the estimated distance between his location in EM34 and Lucas’s in JN17 exceeded 7500 km (4650 miles). “About the same time, my e-mail chirped with a message from Christophe, who had come to the same conclusion,” Swanson said. After some quick exchanges, and verifying 10-digit locators, the two operators settled on an “official” distance of 7599.959 km (4712 miles).

“To the best of our knowledge, referencing data found on AMSAT-UK’s website, this breaks the previous distance records of 7537.799 km between W5CBF and G4DOL, and 7538.685 km between K4FEG and DK1TB,” he said.

Swanson recorded the contact and posted it to YouTube. — Thanks to AMSAT News Service