DXCC, Finally…

I just sub­mit­ted my appli­ca­tion for DXCC via LoTW. This has been an achieve­ment I have fan­ta­sized for my entire time I have been licensed. Thanks to RZ0AF Andrei I sub­mit­ted my appli­ca­tion today.

RZ0AF Andrei just con­firmed this morn­ing! We are among the reg­u­lars that hang out at Andy K3UK’s LoTW sched­ule pages. Andy’s spot­ter and sked page was instru­men­tal in my get­ting the Triple Play WAS award. RZ0AF con­firmed both zone 18 as well as being 100 for DXCC; although Asi­at­ic Rus­sia is not a rare coun­try (need #320 at clublog​.org) I have not heard zone 18. Plus Andrei is a LoTW user! Seems like a good trade: he gives me Zone 18 and DXCC Con­firmed #100 and I give him TN con­firmed on 4 modes (SSB, CW, RTTY, PSK63)

I first learned about DX oper­a­tions from my Grand­fa­ther (sk, ex: KE4NO, W7LNF, W5UHS, W2QBH, W3DST). The idea that he could talk to JY1 King Hus­sein of Jor­dan on the radio bog­gled my mind, and there was a QSL card prov­ing it. I used to stare at this card kept in the draw­er of my grand­fa­ther’s shack desk. By the way, the oak shack desk was also his office/​guest bed­room where I would sleep when I visited.

I am NOT a rabid DXer, I am more a fair-weath­er DXer. I am more a con­tester than DXer. Most of the DX gar­nered is from con­test oper­a­tion, where the sta­tions are con­sid­ered very well-appoint­ed. You know, the super-sta­tions designed to hear puny sig­nals from all parts of the globe extract­ing ever more amaz­ing Rate and Mult. After all, I have a low wire and 100W. That’s it! Noth­ing more fancy.

Sta­tis­tics:

• My first DXCC was N8S the Swains Island DXpe­di­tion on 4 – 7‑2007
• My 100^th DXCC con­firmed was Andrei RZ0AF on 4-25-2010
• I have worked 137 total DXCC (mixed mode) coun­tries as of 4-25-2010
• Accord­ing to Clublog​.org, it took 12493 QSOs to pro­duce my DXCC result from 4 – 7‑2007 — 4-25-2010 
  • CW: 46.36%
  • SSB: 12.69%
  • Data: 40.95%
• Accord­ing to HRD Log­book 2565 of 12493 were actu­al DX sta­tions (Cana­da is DX!) and I had over 9100 con­test QSOs.
• Of 9K con­test QSOs, 2025 were with DX stations
• Almost all con­tacts were made using either an R5 ver­ti­cal or G5RV bare­ly at 30 feet with wires ori­ent­ed N‑S…Mostly the G5RV.
• All con­tacts were made using 100W or less, using Yae­su FT-857D with 250Hz and 2.4KHz crys­tal filters.
• Aver­age sunspot count dur­ing the span from 4 – 7‑2007 to 4-25-2010 was 4.7 (tak­en from data on http://​www​.ips​.gov​.au/​S​o​l​a​r​/​1/6 since NASA’s FTP site seems to be borked.)