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