Thursday, October 15, 2015

The Last One Hundred (Plus Nine)

Back in 2007, after uploading logs to Logbook of the World for three and a half years, I qualified for DXCC. I'd been licensed as a ham 32 years earlier, and had worked nearly 200 entities, but didn't get the confirmations until 2007.

I mentioned this on the SEDXC email-reflector, and got many positive replies. David Johnson K4SSU wrote me and said that he envied the enjoyment I would have working and confirming the next 200+ entities.

Now, eight years later, I have been at 231 current entities for a few months now. It dawned on me that I have only 100 more to go to reach the honor roll. I'm now working up that steeper slope that David Johnson mentioned, where the thrill of working a new one comes only after much waiting.

I haven't been idle. I'm inching closer to 5BDXCC, and trying to work the DXpeditions as they pop up -- especially those that aren't on the air but once a decade.

Still, there's a lot of DX, even easy DX that has eluded me. I still haven't gotten the hang of postal QSLs -- still depending far too much on LoTW. That's probably something I need to fix. There's probably a bunch of DX I've already worked that can't be confirmed any other way.