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.

WSPR 26,27&28 Dec 2014

Event: WSPR 10m amateurradio band
Logger: WSPR 2 - R1714
Station: Yaesu FT-817ND, 1W
Antenna: HB9CV east in morning, south at 12-13 UTC, west in the afternoon
Log converter: DL1HW Adif2Excel2Adif converter, UU0JC logconverter
Log analyzer: HRD V4

Received by 115 unique stations from 26 DXCC. Best DX was VK7AB from Tasmania 16910 km. Nothing from ZL and JA and less stations from Russia and South America. Analyzing WSPR over a couple of days is more interesting then one day only. 10m opens very early one day and late another day. Same when the band is closing. I like to follow and read the blog from Roger G3XBM regarding his WSPRing on 10m. It gives an idea when the band is closing in the afternoon. Roger had a stroke a while ago and has problems talking on the radio. With WSPR he can still enjoy the hobby. WSPR is not only interesting for licensed amateur operators but everyone can try it. You don't even have to use a radio. Use a webSDR instead. That way you can monitor WSPR from everywhere in the world. And you can choose your own location as long as there is a webSDR.

HRD V4 can produce nice maps with mapper (included in V4) as long as you have the locators inserted.

World

Europe

USA

Australia

2014 statistics

And here we are. The end of 2014 is near and so it's time to show some statistics again. This year is marked as the year that all digimode QSOs including CW were made with QRP 5W or less. And actually I didn't miss QRO. QRP with digimodes like JT65 and JT9 are just like you're working QRO. Totally unexpected I did work new ones the so called "ATNO". Most memorable QSO was with Puerto Rico on 6m with 5W JT65. Other nice ones were with PY0/UA4WHX Fernando the Noronha and T6T from Afghanistan. Of course I worked with the IC-706 and 100W SSB as well. In total I worked 17 All Time New DXCC. A record for me in one year. It will be hard to beat next year as I expect the propagation will be worse.
Some statistics from the "home QTH"  log, that log doesn't include the log from my portable activation this year at COTA PA-00009 Rensumaborg.

Less QSOs as last year but more quality. I did less contesting this year and more experimenting. Last year I made no 6m QSO. This year I made a recordbreaking 4. Not surprisingly I made most of the QSOs on 80m and 40m. The horizontal loop does extremely well for those bands in contests.