ATNO stands for All Time New One. For DXers, it means making contact with a DXCC entity for the first time—often after years of near misses, poor propagation, and pileups too large to overcome. When the rare contact finally comes, it can be a cause for celebration, as it was for DX Engineering customer/technical support specialist Mark W8BBQ, who finally felt the satisfaction of writing SV2ASP/A Mount Athos in his log book and receiving this coveted QSL card.
“I had been hoping to work Monk Apollo for over a decade, having caught him on the air only a few times…always just a little too light and with too huge a European wall of Hams. I wondered if I would ever get to work Mount Athos, with Monk Apollo being the only Ham there. In 2018 he heard me calling him on CW. I was a little shocked when I heard him come back to me, but the contact was made and the dancing began.”
Sadly, Monk Apollo, 64, passed away on May 5 after complications from cancer. For details of his contributions to Amateur Radio, take a moment to read this article from ARRL.
