November 2009 Wrap-Up

The hunt for WAS and DXCC continues...: Got back to the shack this month (actually, late October) to work a few contests and return to my WAS quest. I worked Maine three times, leaving only Delaware unworked; QSLs still needed from AL, DE, ME and NV.

Now I'm turning my attention to filling in the grids on individual bands with an eye towards an eventual 5-Band WAS. As of now I have 42 states confirmed on 20m and 16 states on 40m. On the 80, 30m, 15m and 17m bands my counts are in the single digits, though the cards are trickling in and the number of states worked is increasing as I spend more time on 40m at night, 17m and 15m during the day, and avoid the lure of 20m as best I can unless something good pops up on the cluster. Even made a few QSOs on 80m the other night -- the Tarheel doesn't deliver an SWR better than 2.5:1 but my signal made it into the midwest for KS, MO and IL. Unfortunately 12m and 10m operations will have to wait as my Tarheel won't tune those bands (need to get it closer to the ground, I'm told).

FWIW, I now have 39 states confirmed on eQSL.cc, so their eWAS won't be far behind the "official" WAS award from ARRL. As for other eQSL awards, I have 17 zones and 36 countries confirmed.

On the DXCC front, I worked 7 new countries in Oct/Nov and received confirmations from 8 new ones. Now just 17 QSLs away from all-band DXCC...

Misc. QRM: I had my first MT63 QSO with N1GKE in Rhode Island on 17m -- saw his RSID pop up in DM780 and gave it a try. Neat mode -- not sure if it's as error-free and fade-resistant as Olivia, but close.

October/November 2009 Stats (To-Date Confirmed/Worked):
27 DXCC Entities (83/124)
18 CQ Zones (27/30)
26 States (46/49)
160 Total QSOs