Although this blog hasn’t been very active over the last few months, I’m still operating the radio regularly. The warmer weather has appeared in the UK and I’m spending a lot of time outside walking, riding my bike, eating ice-cream and topping up my sun tan.
During the second quarter of 2018, I’ve made just under 900 QSOs and worked 99 DXCC entities using three callsigns, G6NHU, GR6NHU for the Royal Wedding and M7P. I’ve worked one All Time New One, 3B7A (Agalega and St Brandon) on 17m CW and you can hear that QSO on my Audio snippets page. I’ve been sending out some direct QSL cards and I’m happy to say that I’ve now worked and confirmed 275 entities. Every new one is a struggle these days, especially with conditions the way they are so any new one is a fairly major achievement.
A lot of my QSOs have been data again and I’m still sitting around 89% data, 10% phone and 1% CW. I’ve left the inverted L in place and have been continuing to work the lower bands with a bit more effort to try and pick up countries on 80m, 40m and 30m. I’m still a long way from 80m and 30m DXCC but only a handful of countries away on 40m.
Because I’ve been aiming to work more of the lower bands, the percentage of European QSOs is even higher this quarter than earlier in the year. I’m not concentrating quite so much on 17m now so that band has fewer QSOs than before. Not listed in the band breakdown are the 36 contacts on 6m or the 13 I’ve had on 60m.