Welcome to a new year with the sun at or near maximum activity. Hopefully there will be some favourable propagation on the HF bands, and some on the 'magic' low VHF bands too.

I started off the year with no targets, so I have worked anything that comes along into my Christmas present - a new log book, No22. The first contact of note was with GB2HNY closely followed by Phil using G5RV. It must have been 10 years since it was last aired! Just a few days later Rob gave it a second session with great success.

Ignoring the USA as DX, the first one in the log was VU2MSA, in the evening I bagged ZD7CTO, D2UY, PY2AST, and 5 US calls. The 2nd bought more; BY0AB, TF3VE, J75K, J69DS, and HI8S all mixed in with many Europeans. The 3rd increased my DXCC score to 50 for the year, then the sun threw a wobbly that lasted the best part of a week, with rotten conditions. However, the 5th saw Rob (M0KPD/M) airing G5RV again. On the 6th I thought I’d try FT4 for a test and worked 9 DXCCs in just under half an hour.

The sun conditions finally settled, and on the 9th bought in No 75 for the year. Conditions have been far from favourable but there have been short windows of good DX, and on the 18th, I reached 100. Of note, as the hash subsided, I got VK8NSB, DP0GVN, and ZS4JAN. This gave me all 7 continents worked in just over 3 days.

I don’t know if anyone else came across these stations suffixed 'WWA' during January? A large group of stations created an activity that was to encourage band usage. I didn't try very hard to work them but did when I heard one. The award certificate shows that there were 153,539 chasers and I’m only No 8,114.

As the month came to a close, we had the sad news that Ken, G3WYN, our club president and master net controller has been forced to restrict his activities due to health issues. Ken has run the lunch-time net since 1979, long before I was licensed! A quick search of my log shows over 2,000 contacts with him. However, he is hoping to continue with the Sunday morning net so will be with us for some time yet.

As some of you might know my radio is an Elecraft K3 (an early one with a couple of updates) that was thought to be the best available at the time. Following a recent discussion about the latest offerings from Japan I thought I would look up my records - only to find that the K3 is 17 years old!

Looking at some of the newer radios on offer I decided that the K3 is now a bit outdated by comparison with the SDR base stations that have finally caught it up. Unfortunately, there is no longer any K3 manufacturer support in the UK, so a failure risks me being without a radio for quite a time.

One Japanese manufacturer not only has pretty coloured brochures on its web site, but a full back-up of technical manuals and reports as well. That, and a full importer’s support makes a change worth making. So, now is the time to look in the piggy bank and maybe a visit to 'The Toy Shop' before something goes 'pop', the shack fills with smoke and the XYL complains about having to scrape soot off the ceiling!

Good DXing,

Chris, G4ZCS

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