K3PP 2021 Year In Review

2021 was yet another miserable year on so many fronts, but I try to overlook the bad and bask in the good things that happened. In that spirit, I present what was a glorious year for K3PP in ham radio! It was a year of so many highlights that include:

• My best year ever by QSO count (28,172 QSOs!)
• My best year ever for CW activity (23,779 QSOs and 84.4% of all QSOs!)
• A clean sweep of ALL 156 CWops CWT events
  – continuing a streak now at 181 CWTs!
• I joined 45 of the K1USN SST (slow-speed test) events!
• Although I only got in 38 of the 45 state QSO parties,
  my score was #53 of 2064 entries!
• I participated at some level in 282 contests – also a new high!
• A new Carbon County record in the Pennsylvania QSO Party (256,620)!
• My best ever showing in the CQWW DX CW Contest
  (#58 of 1528 SOA in the world)!
• I worked 159 DXCC entities during the year!
• I joined a Field Day team again (K3II) with a few friends
  K3CT, K3SW, K3TEJ, & N3DAP!
• I made a lot of new friends all over the world via the magic of ham radio!

I don’t think anyone was sure what 2021 was going to promise when its first Straight Key Night QSOs radiated into the ether. Would the pandemic ease? Would solar cycle 25 finally yield an increase in sunspots? Would K3PP finally get his new QTH under construction? OK, maybe I was the only one wondering about that last one and for the record, no, it did not happen. 

I had so many doubts in January, but I set a goal of 24,000 QSOs. I assumed I’d be busy with home construction and that it would take a bit of a toll on my radio activity. I was wrong, so I blew past my goal when I logged DK1MAX on 80m in the CQWW DX SSB Contest in October and I set a new personal annual QSO record with UT7NY on 40m in the CQWW DX CW Contest in November!

2021: A New Top Year

As you can see here, I made a lot of QSOs in 2021! I remained pretty active through the year, doing as many contests as possible. Contests are a good way to accumulate QSOs and to sharpen skills.

You can see the vast majority of my QSOs are CW. This is personally satisfying because I wasn’t a very good CW operator prior to joining CWops in 2017. You can see the stark difference from 2017 onward. I did the big ARRL and CQWW phone contests this year and operated some of the PA QSO Party on SSB, but other than that, my phone activity was low. I didn’t do much digital either and what I did do was all RTTY. I tinkered with the FT modes when they first appeared, but I got bored with that mode and now have little interest. I never thought I’d become one of those CW bigots, but I guess that's who I am now! I’ve become a CW man and I’m not disappointed in that!

For a number of reasons, my wife and I have been staying at our log cabin about 40 minutes north of our main QTH. The cabin is close to where we hope to build our next home. The cabin is a mediocre setup, with low power to a beat-up old Butternut HF9V-X vertical and a topography not exactly well suited for ham radio. I am often surprised how well it plays given these constraints. It is decent on 40 and 80, but awful on the high bands. I have no 160m antenna at the cabin either, something I should try to fix. While most of my operating was at the cabin, the main station still yielded the biggest total. It has high power, big antennas, and a killer hilltop, so when I do the big contests, I do them there.

Until I tallied my statistics at the end of the year, I wasn’t even aware that I did nothing on the WARC bands – zilch! My activity was 100% contests and not casual operating. I usually don’t have time for casual operating, so I will need to give that more attention in 2022 and beyond. I did a little 6m from the main home station, but it didn’t even amount to anything as a percentage of the total.

I was active on 239 days of the year! You can see how full the year has been, with the big spikes in daily totals of course coming with the big contests. I am especially happy with the 2200 QSOs I logged in the CQWW DX CW Contest! That was a FUN weekend!

I Love The CWT Events!

I have to admit it, I’m a CWT junkie! I played in my first CWT in January 2017 and made 32 QSOs. I fell in love immediately and committed to do as many of them as I could. Here’s how that worked out over the past few years that I’ve been active in CWT events:

You saw that right! I participated in all 156 CWTs in 2021! When I finished the final 0300 session, my streak stood at 181 CWTs without a miss! Let’s see how long I can make this streak last. I won’t count the 0700 sessions because I’m still a working stiff who can’t do that time very often. I haven’t done one yet, but I hope to surprise my EU friends (and insomniac NA friends) with an occasional 0700 appearance.

My performance has improved notably since I started. I credit CWops and the CWTs in particular for making me a better CW operator! I plotted each CWT for the year, showing the full-hour rate as opposed to the raw number of QSOs. I often have to cut a CWT short due to work commitments, but I made it a priority to get in at least some of each one. I believe the full-hour rate is a more accurate metric to measure my progress.

The range is pretty wide – from 43/hour to 115/hour. I also did one QRP on 01-Dec that was understandably lower. I usually try to break 100 from the big boy station and I almost broke 100 from the cabin a few times – best at the cabin was 99 in the 0300 session on 15-Dec. As good as 2021 was, my best CWT remains the 0300 on 19-Nov-2020 at 125 QSOs. It going to be tough to break that from the cabin, but I’ll keep trying from both QTHs.

Top Stations

Given my high activity in the CWTs, it should come as no surprise that the top stations I worked were also among the most active CWT operators. I also worked most of these stations in other events, but if you do all 156 CWTs, those ops will dominate your list. Here are the 100 most worked stations from K3PP in 2021:

I need to highlight the amazing performance of the Top Ten players here as well as the Top Ten DX stations that I logged repeatedly:

Top DX

I worked 159 DXCC entities in 2021. A full 60% (16892) of my QSOs were with one country – the United States. That shouldn’t surprise anyone because the CWTs and NAQP events I enjoy are heavily US centric. Here in the US, we often count Canada as one of us. Our VE friends came in at #2 with 1334 QSOs. Here is how the next 40 in the rest of the world appeared in the K3PP log in 2021:

As usual, Germany and Italy dominated (Danke and Grazie!) and the list heavily favored Europe. From the Northeast US, that is common, as we enjoy great EU runs in the big DX contests. I remain disappointed in my JA total because my 20m yagi remains stuck on EU, making Japan and much of Asia tough, especially when conditions are down. The increasing activity in Brazil is impressive. We usually count on PY and LU on 10m and they didn’t disappoint there, but activity on other bands has been improving too.

The State QSO Party Challenge

A couple of years ago WN4AFP spearheaded an effort to promote participation in US state QSO parties. The result was the State QSO Party Challenge (SQP). Basically, if you do more of these contests, you score higher in the year-long challenge. It worked! I used to do a few QSO parties here and there and I always went gung-ho in my own state of Pennsylvania. Since the SQP kicked off, I’ve done more. I did every one of them in 2020 – 100% CW and usually low power. In 2021, I missed a few, but I still did pretty well (#53 out of 2064 participants!).

What is even more notable is the unbelievable performance by a few worth noting here:

• K5CM blew away the pack by a mile! Connie is a hard-core mobile op who participates in many of the QSO parties while his wife Pam N5KW drives. His totals are truly outstanding! And let's not forget about Pam's contribution to this achievement!
• OM2VL is a QSO party powerhouse! DX stations have a hard time penetrating the wall of stateside stations in these QSO parties, but Laci doesn’t seem to care. He is always there in every state QSO party and he landed the impossible #7 spot in the SQP! He consistently wins the DX plaque in each of these events – deservedly so! He needs a new house to hold all of his trophies! DL3DXX is the only other DX station in the top 100 of the SQP. Congrats to both!

Grids

I worked at least 1080 grids across all bands. About 6% of my QSOs do not have the grid recorded in my log, so this is a good capture. The most prominent was my home grid of FN20, with 1519 QSOs (5.4% of my total). This grid is home to some of the most active hams in the world, as it contains a large proportion of the Frankford Radio Club membership. I am proud to be a member of FRC! As you might guess, a lot of the operators in my top list emanate their signals from FN20. Here is a plot I made of my 2021 grids worked:

Consistency And Dedication Win!

Contesters often talk about butt-in-chair (BIC) time as a key to high scores. We say this because it’s true – stay in the chair and you’ll make more QSOs. I extended that philosophy through the full year. I’m a very busy man, but I committed to as much BIC time as I could muster. The CWTs were a big part of that, but I also tried to at least show up for a few QSOs in a lot of the weekend contests too. I was able to make at least a few QSOs in 282 contests this year, including my 156 CWTs.

I had this same commitment in 2019 and 2020 also – both great years of their own. As I analyzed the data, I could see why 2021 beat them both. 2019 had me doing a lot of business travel, which took its toll on my radio activity. Then came the evil coronavirus and put an end to my business travel. After 2.5 million miles in the air, it felt wonderful to be off commercial flights for so long. I wonder if I’ll ever return – it won’t break my heart to stay off that treadmill! While my job still keeps me busier than ever, staying home presented lots of BIC opportunities – and I took them!

For much of 2021, I was tracking pretty close to 2020. The PA QSO Party broke open the gap a bit and then the CQWW contests sealed a superior year. All three contests were better than 2020 and that gave me a big boost in this past year’s total – 2243 more QSOs to be precise.

YOU Made This Happen!

This radio hobby wouldn’t be much fun without all of you on the other end of the propagation path! I now have 217263 QSOs in my lifetime log and YOU are the reason. I am immensely grateful to my radio friends all over the world! I put a mind-blowing 7455 of you into my log in 2021! Wow!

THANK YOU!!

K3PP 2020 Year In Review

Twenty-Twenty kicked off with all kinds of great promises for the new decade ahead. Many pundits predicted a variety of momentous events that were to happen – myself included, as a Research Director for one of the companies tasked with such predictions. Boy, were we wrong! All of us were wrong, not just my company. Who would have expected the punch in the gut that humanity experienced in 2020? Good riddance to a year that was miserable on many levels.

But all was not bad! In fact, the silver lining in the COVID cloud was a by-product of the lockdown itself. No, the lockdown was not good, but it did keep me off airplanes for the longest stretch since I began my tech career forty years prior. While I love the interactions I have with people all over the world, I do not miss the hassle of commercial air travel, hotels, and other inconveniences! From a ham radio perspective, I’ve never had a better year! Why? Because I was stuck at home with my station, readily available to escape the blues of the world around me. I am not alone in this position. Many hams also had more time on the air! Thousands of these hams are my friends and we know full well how to socialize at a distance. We mastered this over a century ago!

K3PP’s Best Ham Radio Year Ever

Like so many others, I suffered significant personal anguish in 2020. My hero – my Dad – died in September and a month later, our sweet dog did too. These events hit hard and it is tragic how so many have succumbed to this awful virus sweeping the globe. I prefer to focus on the good things however, and I do celebrate a magnificent year operating my radios.

In 2020, I logged more QSOs than ever before! As you can see in the chart, I even topped last year’s incredible numbers.

Band And Mode Breakdowns Tell Their Own Stories

Of special note is the number of CW QSOs – 20,142 of them in 2020! Thank you to Don N4ZZ for my 2020 CW QSO number 20,000 in the CWops CWT event on 40m at 19:40z on 30-Dec! I have become a CW junkie thanks to the influence and guidance by my friends in CWops and Frankford Radio Club! Over 77% of my QSOs were CW. I dabbled a bit in the newer digital modes FT8 and FT4. These modes offered some novelty for a while, but frankly, I find them boring. I will still use these modes occasionally, but likely not much. Others love them and more power to these people. Ham radio has something for everyone. What one may love, another may hate. No problem. FTx just isn’t my cup of tea.

Since I am an active contester, the contest bands are my most popular, with 40m at the top, followed closely by 20m and then 80m. 15m has recently been improving and even 10m is showing signs of life again! Thank you Solar Cycle 25! I had only 3 QSOs on each of the bands 17m, 12m, and 2m. I lack a decent antenna for 17 and 12 and I lack decent gear for 2m. I made those three 2m QSOs in one of the VHF contests, of which I don’t do seriously.

I Have Some Great Friends Around The World

The stations I work most frequently are (unsurprisingly) other contesters, notably, those who are highly active in the CWTs. Last year, all but one of my Top 40 were US or Canadian stations. The lone European was my outstanding friend Bert, F6HKA. This year, he was joined by Roberto I2WIJ, Dan SM5IMO, and LZ5R with Milen LZ5DB at the key. Welcome, gentlemen!

Any contester on the East Coast of the US will tell you the Germans and Italians are the mother lode for QSOs. The chart below shows just how dominant the DL and I stations are in our logs! Thankfully, we also enjoy a smorgasbord of other EU stations, but Brazil and Argentina are very productive too, especially on 10m. Notably absent from my top list this year is Japan. I love my JA buddies, but propagation has been tough to Asia and my best antenna for JA is my 20m monobander that is stuck on EU. That’s not a bad place to be stuck, but it sure hurts me into Asia. I fixed it once and the old Tic-Ring failed again. I haven’t bothered to fix it again because my plan is to start building another station. Stay tuned for more on that as things come together.

Keep Your Butt In The Chair To Get Big Numbers

Here is where the data gets interesting! The next chart shows my QSO total growing through the year. Each little square is one QSO. Where you just see a horizontal line, this is where time passed with no QSOs. The result of the lockdown is visually obvious – I was home and able to play radio this year whereas 2019 was full of business travel that kept me off the air.

The two years were pretty comparable through about early April. My busiest travel times are late March through mid-June and again from late August through mid-November. You can see how these periods were relatively sparse in 2019, but well represented in 2020.

Another way to look at the year is through this histogram of QSOs each month. Here, you see a dip through the spring and summer because there are fewer big contests then and propagation isn’t as good (which is why there are fewer big contests). October and November should have been bigger but personal turmoil took some steam out of my radio performance.

Yet another way to analyze the data is by totals for each day. I had 217 days with at least one QSO. That compares to 194 in 2019, also not bad given all the travel that year. The spikes you see are contest days, some big and some more modest. I pointed out the biggest of them.

CWops CWTs Played A Big Role in 2020

I cannot overemphasize my gratitude to the CWops organization! It literally changed my life! While I don’t claim to be a good CW operator, I am far better than I was in the beginning of 2017, when I first jumped into the club’s weekly CWT mini-contests. If you are striving to improve as a CW operator, I strongly recommend you reach out to the CWops organization. Its CW Academy has transformed countless hams into respectable CW operators – and it’s FREE!

The CWTs are hour-long CW contests that are held each Wednesday. Each week has three sessions: 1300-1400 UTC, 1900-2000 UTC, and 0300-0400 UTC Thursday. You can earn medals for participating in a specified number of CWTs. Here in the US, you earn a Bronze at 50 qualified sessions, a Silver at 80, and a Gold at 120. I earned a Silver in each of the prior years (2017-2019), but I never thought I’d be able to reach 120 until I retired. Well, the pandemic gave me that opportunity! I only missed 8 CWTs in 2020, giving me more than enough for my first Gold Medal! I also achieved a new high score and high QSO total of 15,625 points and 125 QSOs in the 0300z 19-Nov CWT!

As I sought to analyze my performance, I couldn’t just look at raw scores and QSO totals. Each CWT is an hour long, but there were many occasions where I was unable to do the full 60 minutes. Work still takes priority. So, I decided to track my hourly rate as my key performance indicator. If I could only do 20 minutes and logged 25 QSOs during that time, my rate would be 75 when extrapolated to the full hour. This normalized my performances for better comparison. The chart below presents my normalized rates for all 151 CWTs I did in 2020.

It is obvious that my best time is 0300 and my worst is 1300. I'm just not much of a morning person, but my brain is fully functional in the evenings.

Contests Are My Favorite Activity

I do a lot of contests because I love the fast-paced chase! I go hard at the big DX contests like the CQWW DX and ARRL DX contests, but I try to do a little in as many of them as I can. I did the 151 CWTs and another 97 with various levels of effort. Since most of the bigger contests are on weekends, you can only collect that many by doing multiple contests per weekend. Every weekend has at least one contest, most have several.

The State QSO Party Challenge Added A Fun New Twist To 2020

This year saw the emergence of the State QSO Party Challenge. I often do a little in some state QSO Parties throughout the year, but this new year-long marathon compelled me to try a bit harder. As I got near the middle of the year, I realized I qualified in every one of them to that point. I thought, “Gee, can I get them all?” It wasn’t easy, but the Illinois QSO Party marked the final one of the year and I bagged them all – with 100% of my QSOs on CW! I was one of only 32 people with “perfect attendance” in all 46 QSO Parties!

My Field Day Was Brief, Bare Bones And Uniquely Enjoyable

Field Day was an unusual one for me this year. Unable to join anyone else and mainly due to other priorities taking precedence, I did a very brief (1 hour) operation with a battery-powered 40m MFJ-9040 QRP rig and a dipole slung in the trees at what will be the site of my next QTH. This was as basic as one can get – paper logging, QRP, and a straight key on an open picnic table in the forest and some time off in the middle! I only made 16 QSOs, but I was very pleased with the little outing!

Good GRIDdance To 2020

One cool way to view your activity is to see which Maidenhead grid squares you've worked. I worked 1,039 unique 4-digit grids across all HF and VHF bands in 2020! That even surprised me! By far, the most popular grid is FN20 with 1,569 QSOs. This is my own grid and home to a bunch of my fellow FRCers who are very active in all the contests, so our FN20 grid is likely among your most popular grids too. Here are my most popular grids beyond my own.

I wrote a simple mapping app to plot the grids I worked. Feel free to try my app, but I cannot offer much support. It's pretty straightforward, so support shouldn't be needed anyway. Here is my 2020 map:

Onward to 2021

Fittingly, my final QSO of 2020 was in a contest, the 0300z 31-Dec CWT. Also fittingly, that QSO was with my friend Hank W6SX, the guy who brought me into the CWops organization. I am eternally grateful to Hank and the entire CWops organization and my buddies in the Frankford Radio Club! They collectively push me to be better than I was one QSO ago! Keep climbing and you will realize higher achievements. As my good friend Brian VE3MGY says, “Never Stop Training!” You have to get uncomfortable to grow as a person. Stay in your comfort zone and nothing comes of it. Your comfort zone is ironically a pretty uncomfortable place if you are ambitious! I was pretty uncomfortable in 2020 – and it made me a better ham – and a better person. What will 2021 bring? I won’t even try to predict, but whatever it is – BRING IT ON!

VY 73 HNY de Glenn K3PP