I would imagine he was talking about running WSPR.
Yes WSPR ... The acknowledgement of contact was online. I had an MFJ antenna tuner but it was just a long strand of wire lying over the roof maybe 14 gauge? Slim. Something like 100mw output power? 200mw Maybe? It ran for a couple years unattended and was regularly heard east of the Mississippi and sometimes with some regularity in Europe.
Hope you got a QSL card out of that kind of DX effort. What antenna did you use?