Three new DXCC entities in just a few days

Now that I’ve worked over 240 DXCC entities, finding new ones is becoming a bit of a challenge and so it was very nice to pick up three new countries in just a few days this week.

On Sunday last weekend I managed to work the 9U4U DXpedition to Burundi on 17m CW and then picked up another slot, 20m RTTY on Monday when I got home from work.  I happened to have Thursday and Friday off and over the course of those days I picked up eight more slots for a total of ten, all between 20m and 10m on different modes.  The SSB QSOs (and one of my RTTY contacts) can be hard on the Audio Snippets page.

QSOs made between G6NHU and 9U4U

QSOs made between G6NHU and 9U4U

I noticed on Twitter that someone had worked Burkina Faso, a place I’d never heard of so I investigated and found that it’s the country previously known as Upper Volta which is how I knew it when I studied geography at school.  I’ve managed three slots with the XT2TT DXpedition on 12m, 15m and 17m.

Finally, the one I was most keen to work – The H44KW DXpedition to the Solomon Islands by G3RTE and G3SWH.  I kept my eyes on the cluster all Thursday and Friday but I didn’t even hear a peep out of them. This morning I saw a spot for them on 17m but when I got there it was like a zoo.  There were people calling them on their frequency, the usual police were calling UP UP and it was just mayhem.  While this was happening I noticed a single solitary spot on the cluster saying they were actually working 8kHz above the initial frequency.  I went there and they were a good S5-S7 signal and within ten minutes or so, I made the QSO.  I won’t be chasing for any other bands on this one, I’m very happy with the single contact.

With these three in the bag, I’m now up to 244 DXCC entities worked with 236 confirmed.

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