July 2009 Wrap-Up

What's "New?": I'm still limiting my running totals to my operations from Waco, so "new" means a lot of countries and states that I've worked and confirmed in the past from W2-land. I'd prefer to earn DXCC, WAS, WAZ, etc., from the new QTH and not count the old QSLs, but I may change my mind once I have enough cards to qualify.

WAS: I made a concerted effort this month to pad my WAS numbers, working 41 states in July (33 of them new) to bring my total to 45 since moving to Texas with 31 confirmed (if I count my NJ QSL from NE, I have 46 states worked and 35 confirmed). The states still giving me agita are DE, KY, NE, ME and WY, the first two of which I hear on 14070 damn near every day. And for Christ's sake, how can it be possible that I operated from the NYC metro area for so many years but do not have NY and NJ confirmed?!?!?

DXCC: Short operations during the IARU and IOTA contests this month brought in a few new ones for me, including SV9, VK7, CN, & UN plus several "new for TX" countries. I started to move off 20m a little bit, working 8 countries on 30m (incl. EA8, SV, & YO) and 6 countries on 40m. I've yet to hear anything on 17m or 15m strong enough to even hope to work.

Misc. QRM: Still mostly working PSK31, it's simply the most practical for me to monitor and operate during the week while I work in the mornings and afternoon. Only 1 of 37 phone QSOs this month was made during a weekday, and most of the rest were during the IARU and IOTA tests. •---• The QSLs are finally starting to roll in, getting few each day in the mail from US stations, while LOTW delivered nine DXCC confirmations in July. Also good return with eQSL.cc this month with 46 incoming QSLs from 15 countries. •---• Noise is still my enemy, a constant S7 on the meter. The K3's NB and NR helps, but pretty much any signal below the S7 threshold is lost in space. Once the weather cools off I want to venture into the attic to see about putting up something that's horizontally polarized; I might be able to manage a full-wave loop for the high bands which should be less susceptible to electrical noise.

July 2009 Stats:

• 131 Total QSOs Logged
• 37 DXCC Entities (25 new)
  
• 22 CQ Zones (9 new)
  
• 41 States (33 new)
  
• 20 IOTA Islands (12 new)