2015 in radio
At the end of 2014, I wrote down a whole bunch of goals for my main hobbies, in order to motivate myself to do them more often. Since we’re at the end of 2015 now, it’s a pretty good time to look back and see how well I did. Over the past several posts I’m going to do that, one hobby at a time. Since I’m unlikely to do anything with the radio the rest of the year, I’ll talk about that first. I’m also going to mention what I have planned for the upcoming year.
My first goal is the same every year, more contacts than days in the year. I did really well at this, getting 508 contacts. In fact, that’s 40% of all the contacts I’ve ever made.
Second, I wanted to beat my January and September VHF contest scores. This wasn’t too hard. I only got 216 points in January and 780 in September. For this January, I added a new beam antenna for 70cm up on a mast above the 2m beam but I also removed the coax for the 1.25m antenna so it was out. I got more contacts on both 6m and 2m than 2014 and also more contacts overall. Multipliers were down. The September contest still hasn’t been posted on the ARRL site yet so I can’t officially state how many contacts I got. However, I added the 1.25m coax back so I was active on four bands. I also got a good opening to the south which resulted in increased multipliers including a couple completely new grids. I’ve got my contest scores posted if you want to look through them.
Third, I wanted to operate from W1AW. Anyone who’s a licensed ham can go to the ARRL headquarters in Connecticut and operate for a couple hours. Since I live so close I figured it would be pretty easy to get down there. However, that never happened. So this goal was a bust.
Fourth, I wanted to get single band DXCC. I got all-band DXCC a year or two ago. That was pretty easy. The obvious place to go next is the five band version I’m a long way off from that so I decided to go with just a single band. I don’t remember exactly where I started at the beginning of the year, but I know I had under 60 entities on both 15m and 10m. I thought one of those would be pretty easy to finish up. What I didn’t count on was that propagation on the upper bands would take a total dive partway through the year. In particular I was hoping the December 10m contest would be useful, but I didn’t get anywhere with that. I was able to get in the mid-70s on both of these bands, and I think that was pretty lucky. So that goal was a bust too.
Finally, I wanted to get five band WAS. I knew this would be a real stretch, but I thought if I made it a goal I would give it a good effort. There were a couple contests and special events throughout the year I thought would help me get this, plus I started using digital modes more. That helped a lot with the lower bands, but the propagation problems up on 10m and 15m really ruined this goal too. I was able to get eight states complete on five bands, and eleven more on four bands. Overall, I got over halfway through this goal. That’s pretty good considering how hard it is.
So what are my goals for next year?
Two band WAS. Five bands is probably too optimistic, but I made a lot of progress this year that should let me get two bands done next year. I’ll just need some help with propagation.
Two band DXCC. Again, I got pretty close this year. If propagation on 10m and 15m picks up, I should be able to get this with one or two good contests.
Beat January and September VHF contest scores again. This is probably more difficult this year given my explanation of how September’s contest went and what I think is necessary to do better. But I will give it a try. Good propagation on 6m would really help here too.
Participate in the NH QSO party. This is a weekend NH-specific contest that doesn’t get a whole lot of activity. Another person will help with that. It runs most of the weekend and I’m not going to be around for the whole thing but I’d like to put in enough time for a decent score. I’d at least like to not be last in it.
Do a group VHF contest. I think it’d be fun to do a multi-operator contest where we have someone calling on each band all the time. I haven’t decided whether this is going to be in the winter (in which case it would have to be done inside) or in the summer, where we might be able to operate from a hill top somehwere. If we do this, I’ll make sure to do a post about it.
This fall I got interested in Summits on the Air since it combines both radio and hiking into a single activity. I’ve been putting together a portable radio setup for this coming year, so I made a couple goals for that too:
Get 150 SOTA points. I’m at 56 right now and I can get 10 for each eligible 4000’er so this isn’t very hard at all.
Activate two previously unactivated peaks in New England. I’m going to keep my possibilities a secret so no one goes and gets them first.
The ARRL is running an event in the national parks next year as part of the NPS centennial. As part of that, I’d like to activate some peak in the Whites along the Appalachian Trail. That’d count as an activation both for that and for SOTA. I’m thinking South Kinsman or Carter Dome and basically just hanging out at the top making contacts until my battery dies.
I’d like to activate some other NPS unit. This is a little more difficult in New England, where we don’t really have a lot of actual national parks. We have a lot of monuments and historical parks but not a lot of regular parks.