I didn’t realize it but 2 weeks ago I celebrated by 2nd full year on HF. I documented my first year in amateur radio on HF in a series of posts:
K2DSL’s first year on HF – Part 1
K2DSL’s first year on HF – Part 2
K2DSL’s first year on HF – Part 3
K2DSL’s first year on HF – Part 4
K2DSL’s first year on HF – Part 5
I don’t think I’ll be as verbose this year but here are some of the more interesting stats covering my 2 years in ham radio…
I logged a total of 17,956 contacts in 2 years with 7,500 being logged in the first year which means in year 2 I logged a whopping 10,456 contacts!
The top stations I have logged over 2 years are N2BJ with 67 contacts, WA5ZUP with 65 contacts and AB4GG with 57 contacts. I can usually count on those 3 fine folks for at least one contact in any contest and usually more then one.
I show a total of 169 different logged DXCCs which is 24 more then last year. I looks like I have 159 of those DXCCs confirmed. I looked at the top DXCCs based on the number of logged contacts and the top 6 match the top 6 from last year – US, Canada, Germany, Italy, Spain & then European Russia.
Looking at the contacts by band over the course of 2 years, 20m is still the most logged with almost 8900 contacts followed by 40m with 4249 & 80m with 3475. 10m jumped from 29 in the 1st year to 162 now. I didn’t have any 6m or 2m contacts logged in the 1st year and now I have 78 contacts on 6m and 69 contacts on 2m with most of those during some VHF contests.
Looking at the contacts by mode, RTTY is still the top for me with 9106 contacts logged. SSB is 2nd with a total of 5213 contacts and then CW in 3rd with 3518.
I continue to send out more QSL cards then I get back, but they are starting to come in a bit more now that I’m hitting 2 years and the bureau usually takes at least that long. In paper QSLs, I’m not up to 538 received which is a bit better then a 1/3rd of the 1433 sent out. For LoTW, all contacts are uploaded and I currently show 9510 QSLed. That’s pretty good at 53% confirmed. A lot has to do with a lot of RTTY contest contacts and they are the best at confirming via LoTW. eQSL shows I have 4854 confirmed which is 27%.
I continue to enjoy so many different aspects of the hobby, but contesting, and specifically RTTY contesting, is what I currently can’t get enough of. I’ve done pretty well too for a single station running 100w and nothing more then a G5RV wire antenna. In the 2010 ARRL RTTY Round Up I finished first in the Hudson Division LP category winning my first plaque. In this months CQ magazine I see in the 2009 CQ WPX RTTY contest I ended up 9th overall in the entire US in the LP class. I can’t wait for the next contest and for my next year on HF.
73 and good DX!
K2DSL