N5J Jarvis Island - All time new one

 On August 8, 2024 I was able to work the team N5J on Jarvis Island. It was an ATNO for me: "all time new one" - never worked before DXCC entity. Jarvis Island is an uninhabited 4.5 km2 (1.7 sq mi) coral island located in the South Pacific Ocean, about halfway between Hawaii and the Cook Islands.

My first QSO with N5J was on 15m CW, later followed by QSOs in FT8 digi mode and SSB. Finally it was DXCC #333 for me! 

Tromelin Island QRV - Incredible Pile-up for FT4TA

The last hamradio activation from Tromelin island was in 2000- more than 14 years ago. Many DXers, almost everyone of the younger generation, are looking for one QSO with this absolutely rare DX entity. In November 2014 a team of french operators is QRV for 10 days, bringing this DX country on the air as FT4TA. Right from the beginning of their operation, the pile-up of calling people for FT4TA was incredible. I have never heard a simliar pile-up in the last years. The split range for QSX was more than 25kHz up of their CQ frequency. Incredible.... Thousands of callers where looking for at least one QSO.

I am one of those lucky guys: QSO on 12m SSB and 10m CW - already confirmed at Logbook-of-the-world ! Thank you guys! What a DX ... and an All-Time-New-One for me!

ARRL Centennial QSO Party

The ARRL CQP is a nice challenge! Throughout the year the special event station W1AW is activating each of the 50 US states, plus territories KG4, DC, KH2 and KP4. By working each of the 50 states with a station signing W1AW/1, W1AW/2 ... you can work towards the special award "W1AW WAS". For that, a special award and a plagues wiill be available. All QSOs and award applications need to be done with the ARRL Logbook-Of-The-World LOTW database.

As per beginning of August, I have already confirmations from 47 states with 230+  QSO band/mode slots with W1AW/x on LOTW. Contacts with stations from Delaware, Maine and West Virginia are missing for the time being. It will take until November to get the last QSOs done: DE will be active starting November 26th, ME will start on August 27th and WV on October 22nd.
You can find more information about the Centennial QSO Party here: ARRL website. Good luck hunting for W1AW.

Easter Island - XR0YG

Between 20-27 March 2013, a team of English hams was active as XR0YG from Easter Island on all bands 160m to 10m (CW only). I was looking for them for 4 days with almost no sigs to be heard for me.

Than I started to look for them in the morning and surpise: there they are. I was simply looking for them too late during the days before and so on the wrong bands too.

Today, between 6:00-7:00 UTC, I was ready to jump into the pile-up crowd on 40m CW. And guess what? After 1/2 hours of following the pile-up, I worked them just a little 1kc up. Super Op on the island! A very big pile-up was calling, however the guy on the other side left the QSX area just around 1-3 up! Perfect operation!

And by the way: It was an All-Time-New-One for me: never worked a station from Easter Island before. The QSO is already confirmed as DXCC country #287 on LotW.

Challenge #1000

It was XT2TT from Burkina Faso ! The QSO dated March 5th 2013 on 12m CW set the magic counter for my DXCC Challenge award to #1000.
 
Since my first DX QSO in 1990 I uploaded 13.000 QSOs to the LotW database and I got approximately 4.500 QSL-matches in the database to reach this fantastic award.

9M4SLL - Spratley Island ... new bandpoint

Yesterday I had a short contact on 12m CW with the team on Spratley Island 9M4SLL. Within 24hrs after the QSO, the confirmation in LotW was already in ! Great job from the team. Thank you!

It wasn´t only a very quick confirmation, but it was also a Big Point: it was my bandpoint #999 for the DXCC Challenge in LotW. I am waiting for only one more confirmation to reach the magic threshold of 1000 challenge points. Who will it be?

Monthly DXCC challenge points - September

Another 20 bandpoints added to the challenge counter in September. Some nice DX confirmed via LotW:

CU3AN Azores, TY1KS Benin, UA2FR and UA2FL Kaliningrad, 3DA0PW Swaziland, RI1ANF South Shetland, E51WP and E51M from South- and North Cook, HL2WP South Korea, FO4BM French Polynesia and many more.

Hope that some of those will confirm paper cards as well :-)

JH4UYB - confirmation #5.600

A nice milestone achieved in my Logbook of the World: with the confirmation from Masa-san, JH4UYB from Fukuyima City, I received my LotW confirmation #5.600. The total confirmation rate in LotW is now a little over 30% for me. Not a bad ratio, I think.

Monthly DXCC Challenge points - August

20 points within the month of August were added to the DXCC challenge counter. Not bad...
The highlights of August in my LotW account: CY9M, VP/VA2WA, HK0NA, ST0R, 9M4SLL, E51NOU, V44, VK7, VU2, AL9 and some KH6.

WAS from EA8/Tenerife

Last year in October we were again active with a small HF station from Tenerife. It is one of the Canary Islands, northwest of Africa.. As EA8/DL3FCG we had a QSO with the last 5 missing of all 50 US states:

NewOne on LotW - RI1ANF South Shetland Islands

Got a NewOne in Logbook of the World: RI1ANF on King George Island - part of the South Shetland Islands in the Antarctic.QSO on 20m CW. Thank you Oleg !

Challenge 900

Starting 2005, the beginning of my LotW account in the ARRL Logbook of the world database, I am working on the DXCC challenge award. The goal is receiving 1.000 different band confirmations for each DXCC entity. Per band only 1 confirmation counts (either SSB or CW or DIGITAL...)!

Thanks to the service of the German DX Foundation GDXF www.gdxf.de I got my QSL card from a rare DXCC entity in the mailbox already. 12m, 17m and 20m CW. An alltime New One for me :-)
  

HK0NA - Malpelo Island

Meanwhile the QSOs are confirmed on LotW and eQSL as well ...

USA in a triple play...

Job well done!

Today I  applied for the TPA award of the ARRL. All 50 US states confirmed three times each. In total 150 QSOs and confirmations from all US states.

This´how it looks like ...

See also mor info about the WAS and TPA program here in my blog.