With the love and care of my bride and help from many good friends, I survived 2025. While it was a very chaotic year, there were still many fun things that happened along the way.
In terms of POTA, I filled in a few of the newer RI parks (I have 3 left to go to hit Activated All RI for the second time, and that will be a goal for 2026). In terms of hunting, I finished the year with 1,820 unique parks, up from about 1,600 at the start of the new year. Today being Jan 1, 2026, I worked two dozen stations on 20 CW, and a few will probably be added to my unique park total.
I managed to operate the WFD Satellite station last year, and completed a handful of other bonus points for our club, NCRC. If the weather isn’t too awful, I hope to do the same this year. Summer Field day was a blast as always, and I completed the satellite contacts for our club, some other bonus points, and worked a short slot at the paddle of the CW station.
I’ve really fallen behind in terms of DXing, but I did finish the year with 282 unique countries, 1,582 band-points, and received my ARRL DX Trident Award (CW/PHONE/DATA DXCC – I’m missing a few SSB contacts from hitting the 200 mark on all three, so perhaps that is a good goal for 2026).
On the miscellaneous side of things, I got my QMX+ on the air making CW/DIGITAL and even SSB contacts. I’m beyond impressed with that QRP Labs product. Hans Summers G0UPL, who owns the company, mentioned that it took him 2 hours and 20 minutes to build his (the third one he had put together). I’m embarrassed to say it took me 10 times that amount of time. I resurrected a pair of Morserino32 units to help a friend work on his CW skills (speaking of Morserino – that’s another product that Hans is producing).
Speaking of Hans, you can see his excellent Five Days In May speech on Polar Modulation here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsDBcFXgHbY&t=1s Also he was interviewed for Ham Radio Workbench here: https://www.hamradioworkbench.com/podcast/hrwb-253-qrp-labs-with-hans-summers
Finally, CWops CWT contests always take high priority in my life on Wednesdays, and I was happy to complete 156 of them in 2025. I even have the first two of 2026 under my belt.
