LA8AJA's homepage

Time flies and it's been a year now since my last report. I still like LoTW, but the long delays and all the trouble is not good for LoTW. As I write this, they have finally gotten the new hardware online and the queue is getting smaller and smaller. I'm looking forward to no delay for my upload. I did however upload a few qsoes on December 30th 2012, that has not appeared, so I guess they are lost. The LoTW queue status has now finally started processing logs uploaded this year.

As for the LoTW stats, they are slowly rising. My total confirmation rate has increased a little over 1% from last year. I'm at #307 total LoTW DXCC Countries, but that number is getting tougher and tougher to increase. I'm waiting on a few new ones to appear soon.

Yearly statistics:

Here are my band, mode and DXCC statistics:

As always, keep the confirmations coming!

I wish everyone a Happy New Year 2013.

I've been thinking about this page a lot these days when I have had some time off from work. My updates have been few and far between them. Mostly life has been keeping me busy, and radio activity has been low.

Also I'm not sure how many people really read the stuff I write. If I judge by the comments, there are very few. If I look at the statistics, I do have some visitors now and then.

If you read my page and appreciate my postings, I would really be happy if you would post a comment about it and let me know.

Now let's hunt some DX!

LoTW updates has been slow, but I did get TT8TT confirmed a week or so ago on LoTW. That was yet another new one on LoTW and brings the total up to #307. I worked the expedition back in October.

Yesterday was the first time I worked anything since CQWW CW. I was hoping to get ZL9HR in the log, but I was away last weekend and at work through the week. I have heard them on 40M during evenings, but I have had too much qrm to hear them good enough to be workable.

I was scanning the band and spots for ZL9HR Saturday morning, but I couldn’t hear them. They were too high up in the bands. At around 0900z they came on 40M CW. A few minutes ago, I’m pretty sure they came back to me, but I could never get a confirmation because of all the idiots making qrm on the ZL9 frequency. Luckily, at 0914z I got them for sure. ZL9 wasn’t a new one, but it was a new band for me, so I was quite pleased to get them in the log.

The strange thing is, when you first log one station, the second qso often comes quite easy. Though, I didn’t really expect it to be this easy. I checked them on 15M an hour or so later. They had a nice signal, so I tuned up and set to call. Hmm, nothing was happening, and ZL9 not transmitting for a while, so I parked on 0,88KHz up and gave 1 call. That was all that was needed. He came right back to me.

That was not the end of it however, I managed to get them on 17M SSB and 20M CW a few hours laters. 17M SSB was the one I had the most struggle with, but I didn’t really spend much time in the pile-up’s at all with this one. Thanks for the expedition!

While hunting for ZL9, I worked 5T0SP on a few slots too. They were also very easy to work. 30M/17M/12M CW were all worked on Saturday, and 40M SSB was worked on Sunday morning. A few hours later I got 5T0SP on 12M RTTY

Soundclips:

• ZL9HR 40M CW – new on 40M
• ZL9HR 15M CW – new on 15M
• 5T0SP 30M CW
• 5T0SP 12M CW

I only have a small update to write about this time. I worked PT0S on 30M CW on November 15th and 40M CW on November 17th. That was a new one on CW since I’ve only worked St. Peter and Paul Rocks on 10M RTTY before. I didn’t bother to work them anywhere else.

Last weekend was the biggest contest of the year. I didn’t have any big plans to work much, but as I started listening on 40M CW Saturday morning, I thought, why not? I ended up working a bit over 400 QSO’es, all on 40M. At the same time, I was watching the ReverseBeaconNetwork to see the propagation and where I was heard. I’ve attached a picture for you to see. I find it interesting to see the Skimmer spots come in in realtime. I worked 75 countries and 24 zones. EL2A was worked for a new one on 40M.

Peter JW7QIA is once again qrv for this years CQWW. He sent me this picture from the beautiful northern lights they’re having in Svalbard right now. Thanks for the picture Peter!