In the first few days of the month, I did some mopping up of stations not yet worked in 2024. The haul included; 3DA0, XT2, 5A1, VK9, and 4U1UN.
Immediately following the UN contact I was called by K4CY, a regular from the old days in Kuwait. Bob is the author of my logging program 'Logger 32', quite an honour!
With the onset of the darker evenings and the absence of DX on the higher bands, 15m is dying off earlier so I have returned to 60m.
At last. On the 7th I worked my final grid square for all France. As I suspected, having used the QRZ look-up pages, I found that there is only one operator in that square, so probably a bit rare!
On the 11th I worked S9Z for a new one this year and another IOTA. This was followed immediately after by FS/EA8DBM in the Caribbean for another! The 19th also bought a new island. 3G7X appeared to be a bit busy, so I joined the CW pileup and to my surprise got a 59 report. As usual having worked him, I then looked up QRZ to see where he was and found another new IOTA. If you fancy a challenge, try & find Chiloe Island (clue, its South America).
When I was a kid, the old black & white films portrayed the USA first nation Indians as living in the 'wild west' however a recent contact proves that they actually occupied the whole of America. My contact was with W0W a station celebrating the Mississippi Pow Wow. I can recommend looking at their QRZ.com page for the details.
As the month draws to a close, the surprises come in thick and fast. On the 20th in a little over 10 minutes I bagged Tierria del Fuego for a new island - SA-008, probably the furthest south you can work. This was followed by OX7AKT on Greenland for NA-018 at the opposite end of the globe. Then a few minutes after that HD8CW on the Galapagos Islands for SA-004 out in the Pacific and my 215th DXCC for this year.
The weekend of the 23rd & 24th was the CQWW CW contest. Just like the SSB version, it was a free for all with only the zone report of interest. Another haul, but as I was feeling a bit low I struggled with the CW pileups and pronounced 'ringing' of received signals. Several times I called really bad incoming signals only to receive '5 9 xx' so this problem is probably at my end. I must look into this further! However, the end result was nothing special with 19 zones and 17 IOTAs from 92 QSOs. If asked, I might submit a check log but it was not worth a full entry.
Every time I work a US station I look up their grid square, state, & county which I load into the electronic log. From the beginning of the year I worked all 50 states, virtually every square in the eastern US and most of the western ones. As for counties, as there are over 3,000 of them, I will count them at the end of the year!
As this is my last bit before the year-end, may I wish everyone a Happy Christmas and a New Year full of DX.
Chris, G4ZCS
