The title of this post gives it away. Against all odds and way over my estimated ballpark figure. 29865 – I never made more QSO in one year than in 2014. The glass-half-empty guy that I am says: One hundred thirty five contacts more and I would have crossed the psychological barrier of 30k. Oh well, shoulda coulda woulda.
CW remains the mode of choice. SSB is a necessary evil to bridge gaps between CW contacts. And I have no idea when and where I made 80 RTTY contacts? Ah there you go, the log says CQ WPX RTTY 2014.
I was only active for 67 days of the year. A day means either one QSO or 2k. Gone are the days when the bed is in the shack and I was working in shifts like 2001.
It took somewhat longer to compile the statistics. The old VB6 program I wrote in 2007 didn’t run on the new Win8.1 machine. After setting the compatibility mode to Vista SP2, it ran like a charm. Thank you Google and thank you people posting real usable solutions. And to think I considered myself deVistafied by now. I’ve learned so much more programming techniques since then that I could make this program better. Or at least better looking. It would be fun to do and all things considered not take too long but I just lack the time. It’s these things that disturb the fragile balance of devoting enough time to all parameters in the equation called life, and not favor one aspect too much for too long.
More news from the time lacking department. For years I’ve been refusing to pay for an upgrade of DX4WIN. I have been a user since 2000, my very first HF QSO got logged with it. The last paid upgrade was in 2003 I believe. More precise: the last upgrade I paid for. Since then I stuck to v6.04 which had all I need. I did not integrate LotW nor eQSL into my DX-logkeeping. Because v6.04 does not offer that. I haven’t logged a QSO with DX4WIN in over a decade since I exclusively use N1MMLogger to write contacts to a database. Afterwards I use the ADIF export / import functions of both programs. My plan was to make my own basic tailor made DX tracking / QSL bookkeeping software with LotW and eQSL integration. And even Clublog. I wrote some initial code somewhere in 2008 / 2009 but then I volunteered to do the UBA DX contest log checking. That took me three years to get where I am now. I wrote a program. I completely rewrote it from scratch the year after, based on what I had learned the first time. Then I ironed out the wrinkles another year later. I still have to work on the program each year to fine tune it and to find solutions for problems introduced by others. These others being sloppy participants and software authors liberally implementing Cabrillo standards. Ideally I should do it again from scratch once more and provide an intuitive GUI and manual so that someone else can do the checking. The program is absolutely NOT user friendly as it is right now. Furthermore I have never used a compiled version of the code and always run it from the debugger.
By now it’s clear that this homebrew software project won’t see the light soon. If one day at all. I’d love to do it because programming is as rewarding as any other form of homebrewing but I need to be realistic. I have to admit that right now there is no time for something that will suck me up as deep as a software project. A project that is only a side project of what is ‘only’ a hobby in the first place. I really have to remind me of that. Because I tend to favor all aspects of ham radio. And so I gave in and just paid 34 Euro for an upgrade. I am now running the latest DX4WIN. The latest yet already four years old already. Yikes!
Oh yeah, just for the heck of it I can now be reach via oq5m.be too.