2014 highlights, 2015 goals

A bit of a tradition on my blog. The highlights from last year and the goals for next year. If you like to read my post last year you can find it here. This is one of the posts I'll be looking at many times next year. And did I meet my goals this year? I made my best score ever in the PACC and reached 4th place. I will not be able to beat that in 2015 for shure as I can't participate the full 24 hours this time due to family obligations. I did work some new DXCC, a record breaking 17 of them. And my soldering iron did heat up to build a QRPp and a fieldstrength meter and repair my Icom IC-706, Alinco DJ-G5 and L/C meter. I did do some more WSPR and that resulted in 4 new DXCC a total of 76 DXCC on WSPR with 1W now. What can I tell, I'm a very satisfied radio hobbyist.

VERON Honor roll, climbed one place. Still in the top 100.

2014 was a very interesting year. I made a decision to write this blog in English only as it takes too much time to write everything in Dutch. Sometimes I will supply a Dutch translation if time allows. Propagation was and is still very good despite the news that the solar maximum is over now. Highlight of the year were my QRP digital mode operations. With the best and most special contact made with WP4JCF (Puerto Rico) at 6m JT65. Only 5W and my W2000 vertical at 6m above the ground were used, QRP to the max I think. Of course there were other highlights and fun things. Building a 28MHz HB9CV, actually build it 2 times this year, was a great experience again. My first QRPp efforts with WSPR. Discovering the new SIM digimodes. PE1BVQ Hans and me visiting the radio rally Jutberg together was a great day and despite the bad weather we had a lot of fun. The QRP skeds with PE1BVQ were really surprising. The 3 band endfed Hans made me and send me as a surprise. The activation of PA-00009 Rensumaborg in a couple of runs and participation in the Fieldday contest with this new endfed. The new QSL card I designed. The new N1MM+ contest logger made a entrance into the shack computer and so did a new version of WSJT-X. All very nice and happy things. But something sad happened as well. Fellow blogger, great experimenter and inspirator G4ILO Julian died in October. We will miss him a lot in the hamradio community.

The goals for 2015. Well, did think a lot about it the last couple of days. And actually it took me a few days to write this post. I think it is good to go for goals in the hobby. Of course I will continue to chase WSPR DXCC on all bands with a power of 1W or less. I reached 76 DXCC this year and it's going to be difficult to get some new ones. I regularly check the activity at WSPR.net but do not see much new ones these days. Wish there was some more activity from south and central america. I would still like to continue heating up the soldering iron and am making progress with the 30m WSPR AXE kit from Jay W5OLF which I already bought a while ago. It will be the first thing in 2015 to finish. I've some projects in and around the house here but still hope I can make time to start with the setup of the versatower in the backyard. Not 100% shure if time and money allows me to do that but you have to keep dreaming. I will continue digital mode QRP but it's not a goal, if I have the Icom connected with the modem it could be QRO as well. Certainly I would like to work some more JT65 and JT9. And occasionally be QRV from the mobile. I will participate in the biggest contests and Dutch contests as long as time and family allows. Chasing DX will always be one of the important things in the hobby for me and I hope to work some new ones again. It will be hard to beat this year though!

And now this is the last day of 2014. The last sentence of the year. Wishing you blog readers and fellow bloggers a very prosperous, healthy and happy new year.