It’s hard to believe but I’ve been on HF for 1 year already. Well technically it’s 51 weeks, but over the next week I will have very little time to make contacts during the week, and with the VHF contest next weekend, I won’t be home and will be with my local club.

I made my first HF contact on 6/15/2008 with K8HGX mobile on the Pennsylvania Turnpike.  Jack was nice enough to send me a return QSL card in memory of that first 20m SSB contact. Since that monumental start, I’ve made a few more contacts.  7,499 more to be exact. I currently sit at exactly 7,500 contacts in my logbook.

All the logged contacts were at my home QTH using 100w and a G5RV antenna with the exception of 121 contacts logged on vacation at my in-laws in North Carolina. Those 121 contacts were on 100w and a 20m dipole.

Of that 7,500 total contacts, 6,904 were logged during one of 46 contests I participated in. The contests contained anywhere from 3 contacts in a QSO party to over 500 contacts in two contests (CQ WPX RTTY and CQ WW RTTY).  The top 20 contests this past year make up 5,945 contacts.

The top 5 stations I made a contact with are:

I’ll make additional posts this week on other stats related to the 7,500 contacts over this past year. The most important stat though is that every one was exciting in its own way and I had nothing but fun making each and every one of them. I wonder what I’d do if there were sunspots?

73,
K2DSL