10 Years On

It seems hard to believe but its been 10 years since I first started my little blog here.  So much has changed over the years.  Ham radio still has its exciting moments but I don't seem to feel the same urge to prattle on about things as I used to.  Whenever something new and unusual happens I do try to write something about it but the past few years have mostly been just working DX and incremental improvements to the station.  What strikes me most looking back is how my interests have evolved along with my station improvements and, mostly, the progress of the 11-year solar cycle.

Beginning back at the last solar minimum it was so difficult to make contacts here.  I just couldn't understand how a single station could make thousands of contacts during a weekend radio contest when we struggled up here just to get a hundred into the log.  Boy, that sure changed as the cycle ramped up and we finally started to have some decent propagation.  I nearly lost my mind the first time operating in a contest where the signals never got snuffed out by the aurora: (ARRL DX - Life is Like a Box of Chocolates...)  Only a few years later as the cycle peaked I was setting records and hanging contest award plaques on my wall.  Unfortunately, after the highs of the solar maximum I seem to have completely lost interest in radio contesting.  Going back to the huge disparity between the conditions up here and "down south" after seeing what I was able to do on a more-or-less level playing field kind of saps one's enthusiasm for that sort of activity.

Some things just got left behind as the cycle ramped up.  I really enjoyed working amateur radio satellites and had hoped to one day build an EME-capable station.  One of my all-time most popular blog posts is the story of the capture here of telemetry from a wayward NASA satellite: (NanoSail-D: Sailing the New Sea)  As HF conditions improved, however, I spent most of my time building out that part of the station and the VHF/UHF stuff was put aside for another day.

Other things were left behind for different reasons.  Several extremely rare IOTA island groups were nearby and I invested a huge amount of time and treasure in "activating" them.  The culmination of my efforts was a 5-day stay on Greens Island in the NA-182 group: (CK8G - The Perfect Storm)  I made almost 5000 contacts from there in April 2010 but after that the novelty started to fade.  The next year VE8GER and I traveled to Tent Island in the NA-193 group.  Propagation was lousy and we ended up getting chased home by some unexpected bad weather: (XK1T - Snake Eyes)  It made for good stories but I haven't really had the urge to go back to any of these places yet and, thanks to my efforts, they are no longer considered that rare.

I had always been a bit of a DXer but once conditions had improved I realized that if I paid attention to what countries were active I could generally work anything that was on the air.  Between the countries I had worked as a beginner back in the nineties and the new ones that came along regularly, I did a pretty good job of getting everything in the log that was available, at least on one band or mode: (The Verdict is In)  By the time we slid into the current solar minimum I was needing only a couple of dozen more to have "worked them all".  The new ones keep trickling in and I try to make sure I don't miss any.  I still need a few that have been around sporadically (like SV/A and VK0M) but sooner or later I'm sure they'll find their way into the log.

The biggest shocker of all was the low bands.  When solar minimum conditions returned in 2017 I knew that was time to concentrate on trying to work new ones on 80m.  I thought that maybe if I focused my attention it might be possible to work 100 countries there and be eligible for the 5-Band DXCC award before I passed on.  I figured I might have four years now and at least four years at the bottom of the next cycle.  After that I wasn't so sure but if I worked at it then maybe it would happen.  What I didn't count on was how the new FT8 digital mode would take the ham radio community by storm.  Released in mid-2017 it allowed contacts to made under very marginal propagation conditions.  The instant popularity combined with being able to "see" all the stations that were active meant that instead of taking a lifetime it only took me 13 months to work those last 70 countries I needed to earn DXCC on 80m.  Now I think that DXCC is possible from up here even on 160m (and I'm well on my way already!)

I intend to keep writing here, perhaps not as often as I used to, but certainly whenever something noteworthy happens.  I don't know how many people out there actually read what I write but I love being able to go back myself and take a little walk down memory lane once in a while.  Maybe someday I'll turn it all into a book.

73
John VE8EV