2020 statistics

 The yearly statistics are always a surprise to me. How many QSOs did I make? On what band? How many DXCC?  This year was a remarkable DX year again. And I was active on the 4m band for the first time. On 60m I worked 37 new band DXCC. 4 of those were ATNO (All Time New Ones). On 6m I worked unexpectedly 10 new band DXCC. On 4m I worked 31 new band DXCC. For me these are amazing numbers. I never expected this amount of DX in the low sunspot years. Imagine what could happen in the next years when propagation start to improve.

2020 was amazing QSO wise. 4768 QSOs, compare that with 2019! And I didn't even count the 5424 QSOs I made in May with the PE75FREE call. That would make the QSO count 2020 total 10192 QSOs in one year. That might me normal for a fanatic contester but not for a average station like me. I always complain that I don't have much time for this hobby, this might feel so but if I look at the stats.....I think I have to stop complaining. I might even step back a little, be more selective in making QSOs... 

It surprised me that I made more SSB QSOs compared to data QSOs this year, last year I thought it was a trend for the future to make more data QSOs but I think I have to think that over...

Above my worked DXCC stats. I concentrated on 60m and 4m this year. Although I'm not far away from 100 DXCC on 80m, 30m and 6m. I might even get over 200 DXCC on 10m in 2021? I never thought I would get 168 DXCC on 60m, but you see....it happened.

Then the confirmed DXCC stats. 30-40 years ago I was really into QSLing. These days most confirmation goes via the internet. Ik like to have a confirmation but in de end it's not really that important anymore. Why should you have proof from a contact? To show others? What are we doing it for? The radiohobby is fun to me, I don't have to proof anything. But it could be different for others of course...

The amazing amount of QSOs divided in months. May only counts 36 QSOs, that's because I was active as PE75FREE for 99,9% of the time. Oktober gave me a recordbreaking 1010 QSOs only in the CQWW DX SSB contest, the first time I worked over 1K QSOs in a contest ever.

It always is my intention to use as much modes as possible. However, I was not active in Olivia, Feldhell, JT65 or other modes. I was active in JS8 but since my log counts them as FT8 it is included in the FT8 total number. SSB is still the mode I use most, however 90% is from SSB contesting. On a daily basis I most time use FT8 since it is so easy to work with this on remote. Last year I thougt FT4 would become more popular but it didn't, most FT4 activity is on 20m. On other bands it is less. Most MSK144 QSOs were made on 4m.

I thought my most popular band would be 60m this year. But after processing the log it is clear that most QSOs were made on 80m, this is again due contesting. I have spend far more time on 60m this year but made considerable less QSOs compared to 2019. New is the 4m band, with 111 QSOs last year. I'm also surprised by the number of 10m QSOs. The WARC bands stay behind, especially 30m again. This is due to the restriction on FT8 use in the Netherlands. We are still not allowed to do digimodes below 10.140MHz. I have been active on FT4 a few times but activity on that mode is very limited.

What will this year bring? WSJT-X contains a few new experimental modes, will they get popular? I'm curious if my log will contain FST or Q65 contacts in 2021? We will see, time will tell...