2017 Statistics

Saw several blogposts show up in my blogroll with clublog statistics. I have to admit that clublog is by far the best statistic website around for what you want to know about the amount of QSOs and overview of your DXCC contacts and QSL. And again this post is for archive purposes, my radiohobby in 2017 statistically.

A few more QSO's compared to 2016. I asked myself why? And then it occured to me I forget to mention in my last post of 2017 I had a great time with some hamradio friends in the CQWW DX SSB 2017 contest last year. It certainly was another highlight from 2017 and hopefully we can do it again at the end of the year. When you count the approx. 600 QSOs I made in that contest and add them to my total I had a reasonable amount of QSOs in 2018. But does QSO amounts really matter? No not at all! Personally I thought I made more digimode contacts but it seems it was only 25% of all the contacts, SSB is still my favorite.

Above my worked DXCC status. Only 3 new ones last year. I'm curious what 2018 will bring for me DX wise. Propagation is really decreasing sometimes and you need to be lucky to get in the log of a most wanted DXCC. However my new antenna tower will support new antennas and hopefully give me more possebilities.

My QSL status, even worse only 2 new ones confirmed over the whole year. Still waiting for a few. That's something I really had to get used to; QSL via bureau can take years. QSL post on CB/11m DX was so much faster but though all QSL was send direct. I never send out direct QSL first for contacts on hamradio as most do want to have big money for postage and since this is a hobby I don't want to "buy" QSL cards. Besides that I don't really see the value of paper QSL anymore. A system like eQSL and LOTW these days is a lot better and faster. Paper QSL is a leftover from old hamradio days. However, for some radiohobbyists paper QSL is part of their hobby just like I write this blog as part of this radiohobby.

My top months for the amount of QSOs are February and March, the contest months for me. Only 2 QSOs in April is a absolute minimum.

If you look at the QSOs per band it looks like 80m is my favorite, but in reality it isn't. This is just a result of a lot of 80m contest QSO. Same counts for 40m, At the moment my favorites are 60m, 10m and 6m.

9 modes in total last year. A exclusive first with THOR. With the introduction of FT8 I already made 161 QSOs on that digimode. But still with 1304 QSOs SSB is the winner! Still digimode experimenting is very important for me. So what is that 9th mode that is not appearing in the graph? Well it was FSQ...as this digimode is not accepted in ADIF format it couldn't be found in my log. Indeed I made a few experimental FSQ QSOs but doubt I put them in my log as the QSOs were more like a chat and not really exchanging other info. Still one of my goals for 2018 could be working a number of digimodes again.