QSO Distributions (as of 00:00 UTC 01-Jan-2011)

The K3PP log currently contains 61,363 QSOs with 23,852 stations!

In my professional life, I am an industry analyst, researching, analyzing, and publishing the results of this analysis. Naturally, my curiosity about data compelled me to do some analysis of my radio activity. Here are some of those results. I hope you enjoy. As always, I am interested in any suggestions you may have or any similar analysis you may have done. Together, we can learn a lot from such analysis.

The breakdowns are illustrated below. Click on the graphs for the full-size versions.

You can very clearly see the drought I had over the 2003 through 2006 period. I made some progress on a rebound in 2007, but I started to kick it back into a higher gear in 2008. I'm now doing better than the drought years, despite the worst solar minimum in anyone's memory! Onward and upward we go!

Work has been the major influence to the time I can dedicate to radio. In early 2008, I made a great job change to Forrester Research, but I also refocused my attention to amateur radio. Work is still brutally demanding, however I can dedicate more time for the major contests and even a little in between!

I'm a decent CW operator, but not good enough to run much in the big contests. I can run well in phone contests and running is how you accumulate lots of QSOs. The result is that I have many more phone QSOs than CW. I do RTTY sporadically, but I am starting to do more RTTY and other digital modes now. I've improved my equipment to be more effective at the digital modes.

My distribution has slowly been increasing for CW and digital modes. This does not indicate a reduced effort on phone. In fact, phone is still my dominant mode. What is happening, however, is a stronger effort in the CW contests and a little more in the RTTY contests.








As a contester, it should come as no surprise that the overwhelming majority of my QSOs are in the "contest bands" of 160m, 80m, 40m, 20m, 15m, and 10m. I played a little with 60m when it was first made available, but I don't do much more than listen there now. I do want to do more, but I need more time to tinker there and hopefully build a tuned dipole for the band.

This is an interesting graph that shows the number of QSOs I've had with the twenty most popular DXCC entities over the years. It gives you a good perspective on contest activity from these locations. Here in the northeastern US, we can run Europeans at a blazing pace during contests. That's what makes it so much fun to do contesting from this part of the world! Many in this part of the country have difficulty getting through to Japan. Compared to Europe, we do, but loads of our JA friends get on for the big DX contests and make it a lot easier for us. I know I've worked lots of JA's, but even I was surprised to see them consistently at #3 on my list! Arigatou!

The table below shows this same Top Twenty list, with last year's rankings also shown. You can see a few shuffled places:

QSOs
DXCC Entity Country
2010 Rank
2009 Rank
Change
3152
DL Germany
1
1
2703
I Italy
2
2
1750
JA Japan
3
3
1678
VE Canada
4
4
1298
EA Spain
5
6
+1
1257
UA European Russia
6
5
-1
1160
G England
7
7
945
LU Argentina
8
9
+1
916
S5 Slovenia
9
8
-1
913
OK Czech Republic
10
10
868
F France
11
11
846
SP Poland
12
12
703
PY Brazil
13
13
703
HA Hungary
14
14
686
UT Ukraine
15
15
645
YU Serbia
16
16
538
ON Belgium
17
18
519
9A Croatia
18
17
497
PA Netherlands
19
20
+1
474
OH Finland
20
19
-1

DXCC Status

These charts are also as of 00:00 UTC on 01-Jan-2011. I finally verified a huge pile of DXCC entities with both Logbook of the World (LoTW) and paper QSLs! I am now the proud owner of a Five-Band DXCC (5BDXCC) plaque!

Here are the 12 remaining entities I need to work and my current breakdown for each band and each mode:

K3PP DXCC Needed Entities DXCC Entity Count Progress
Prefix Entity
Mode
Worked
Confirmed
Verified
3Y-B Bouvet
Mixed
329
308
305
BS7 Scarboorough Reef
CW
295
251
234
FR-J Juan De Nova
Phone
315
286
271
FT8W Crozet
Digital
134
97
91
HK0-M Malpelo Is.
KP1 Navassa Is.
Band
Worked
Confirmed
Verified
P5 DPRK (North Korea)
160m
106
75
62
VK0-M Macquarie Is.
80m
153
122
111
VK8-O South Orkney Is.
40m
206
167
154
VK8-S South Sandwich Is.
30m
126
68
59
VU4 Andaman & Nicobar Is.
20m
303
264
254
ZS8 Prince Edward & Marion Is.
17m
149
76
58
15m
299
251
235
There are currently
338 active DXCC Entities
12m
70
26
24
10m
265
206
192
6m
36
17
13