Not a great distance, but a rare catch on HF -
which means a big pile up once spotted. Fehmi kindly agreed to a
sched via email, and we picked a perfect time and frequency for
a civilized chat, far enough up the band to avoid a full-on
scrum.
Albania is famous for being the spiritual home of
the Norman Wisdom Appreciation Society (somebody had to) and
something of an enigma as a late arrival to the modern European
project after long period of a restrictive communist regime.
This was another case of pile up avoidance.
Albania is not long distance, but it is scarce with pretty much
one active amateur, and so much in demand. Surrounded by
countries with active amateur populations all apparently running
"quite a lot of power", us Brits can be at the end of a long
queue.
... this worked like clockwork, set
up on the appointed frequency at the time suggested by the
VOA predictions, and we had a good chat free from pileup
nonsense.