So, today is the third day I've had the station up and running and my dad called me and told me skip was rolling in up there in NW Washington. We both went to 39 LSB and my very first CQ he heard me. He wasn't sure it was me, so I called CQ one more time for him and sure enough, he heard it. He called back to me several times, I was barely picking him up through the static, but I did hear him and we made our first successful DX (which was our original goal)...pretty cool if ya ask me...