2018 in numbers

I used quite a few different callsigns in 2018. Here’s an overview:

OQ5M              17171      contest + DX
OP0HQ              2041      IARU contest 20m CW
ON18FWC            9276      Football World Championship Russia 2018
OT70NNV            1449      70 years UBA club Ninove
OT70UBA            4063      70 years UBA HF Commission
ON5ZO/P             887      Region 1 CW Fieldday

That is a total of 34887 QSO which easily beats the previous top year (2014 with 28400 QSO).

I made at least one QSO on 112 days in 2018. Which is more than the double of the previous years.

Mode breakdown: 27098 were in CW, 7555 in SSB and 234 RTTY.

This means 77.68% CW  –  21,65 SSB  –  0.67% RTTY.

This is of course almost impossible without the use of these special event callsigns, especially in a no sunspot year.

The band distribution:

How on earth did I manage 779 contacts on a virtually dead 10m band? It seems May and June were the best months for 10m. Of course this means a lot of local EU contacts with these special calls.

This is with one tower, a small triband yagi, single wire antennas for WARC and 80+160. The OQ5M and OPØHQ contacts are made with 1200W in the contests. The special event callsigns were activated with the small 500W amp and field day was of course low power. 

Now if only I could make a living by running the bands and logging contacts?