100,000 QSOs and counting
THIS IS PROBABLY ONLY A PARTIAL PAGE AS OF NOW. I MAY ADD TO IT AS TIME GOES BY (Imagine Dooley Wilson singing here) AND I COMPILE MORE INFO AND STATISTICS. SO CHECK BACK NOW AND THEN.
My 100,000th QSO as a ham came on May 23, 2022 when I worked N4KS. Details of the 100,000 QSOs follow below.
Back on October 13, 1963, and again on May 31, 1964 I worked a ham with the call of W6KG. Shortly thereafter I received a QSL card from him that is pictured here. It was received with some of the edge trimmed off. Maybe just too much info to fit on the card?
I want to point out one thing on the card that impressed me very much. At the very top of the bottom picture, he states that he (and his family KL7DTB/6 - XYL, W4ZEW - YL) had made over 105,000 QSOs. It doesn't state how the QSOs were distributed among the three, but nonetheless that's a lot of QSOs for 3, 2, or 1 ham. Wow, I couldn't even imagine that in my wildest dreams then. Amazing!
The two QSOs I had with him were my QSO #s 519 and 1986, almost an infinite number behind his 105,000. I thought I might be lucky to get a few thousand, nowhere near his 105,000 mark. OK, so I was wrong. After 59 years and a couple months of hamming, I am at the 100,000 mark. The time period was not continuous as I had some periods of inactivity due mainly to working at a job or having some other interests more important at the time than ham radio.
94,358 of the QSOs were made using my KN3WWP (1963) and K3WWP (1963-2022) calls, and I also used other calls for 5,642 more QSOs as shown here.
Call First Used Latest Use Location QSOs Notes
K3WWP/3 2/20/1967 10/13/1967 Pittsburgh, PA 41
WA3IXO/3 10/14/1967 1/19/1968 Kittanning, PA 19
WA3IXO 10/16/1967 3/ 7/1968 Pittsburgh, PA 121
KB3MQT 10/ 5/2005 3/29/2006 Kittanning, PA 54
N3AQC 5/19/2006 8/29/2021 Kittanning, PA 2,529
N3A 10/16/2006 6/27/2021 Kittanning, PA 1,840
N3A/3 10/ 1/2007 10/12/2021 Kittanning, PA 810
N3AQC/MM 8/13/2009 8/13/2009 Pittsburgh, PA 4
K3MJW 8/23/2009 8/23/2009 New Kensington, PA 1
NY3EC 9/12/2013 5/21/2022 Pittsburgh, PA 223
An explanation of the calls follows here. My original Novice call was KN3WWP followed by K3WWP when I upgraded to General and later to Extra. When I went to Gateway Tech in Pittsburgh and later worked at WPIT, I lived in the third floor of a boarding house and used my K3WWP call as K3WWP/3 for portable operation there. Later I got a second call for there which was WA3IXO. I also used it as WA3IXO/3 in Kittanning.
KB3MQT was a club call for the NAQCC which was followed by N3AQC which is still in use for club events. N3A was used for NAQCC Anniversary Month events, as was N3A/3. N3A was also used by me and Mike KC2EGL for Field Day in recent years.
N3AQC/MM was used on the Requin the first time we operated from there. The /MM was really not needed since the Requin is in permanent dry dock in Pittsburgh. But what the heck? HI
K3MJW is the Skyview club call.
NY3EC is the Requin call based on NYEC used when she was in active operation. Some of the operating using that call recently has been with QRO power since the operations promote the Requin and not any NAQCC or QRP operation. That is true especially of the Museum Ships on the Air event in June each year.
Of course all 100,000 QSOs with the exception of 4 or 5 were made using Morse Code. The 4 or 5 were made testing other ham's rigs on AM or SSB.
I think it will be interesting to develop various stats for the 100,000 QSOs such as QSOs by continent, by band, and in other ways. I have two different spreadsheets, one for KN3WWP and K3WWP, the other for all the other calls combined. I'll just make 3 colums for the stats, one for each spreadsheet and a combined total of the two.
First let's look at QSOs by band.
Band OtherCalls K3WWP All
160 8 3456 3464
80 769 17317 18086
60 1 28 29
40 3035 34382 37417
30 245 4454 4699
20 1012 16766 17778
17 18 1080 1098
15 445 9341 9786
12 0 421 421
10 107 7073 7180
6 2 40 42
Total 5642 94358 100000
Here we go by continent.
Cont OtherCalls K3WWP All
AF 2 783 785
AN 0 19 19
AS 0 601 601
EU 41 15998 16039
NA 5596 74521 80117
OC 1 332 333
SA 2 2093 2095
unk 0 11 11
Total 5642 94358 100000
"unk" mostly means /MM stations where continent couldn't be determined. Also other reasons.
Let's look at QSOs by CQ Zones now:
Zone OtherCalls K3WWP All
1 0 128 128
2 0 41 41
3 132 4465 4597
4 2467 31527 33994
5 2973 33622 36595
6 2 398 400
7 1 671 672
8 20 3368 3388
9 1 1111 1112
10 1 230 231
11 0 365 365
12 0 77 77
13 0 316 316
14 19 6787 6806
15 14 7639 7653
16 7 1058 1065
17 0 98 98
18 0 96 96
19 0 37 37
20 0 554 554
21 0 19 19
22 0 0 0
23 0 10 10
24 0 0 0
25 0 246 246
26 0 0 0
27 0 7 7
28 0 0 0
29 0 12 12
30 0 21 21
31 1 257 258
32 0 40 40
33 2 573 575
34 0 4 4
35 0 143 143
36 0 36 36
37 0 2 2
38 0 24 24
39 0 4 4
40 0 71 71
unk 2 301 303
Total 5642 94358 100000
Contest QSOs (approximate)
Other Calls - 3890
KN3WWP/K3WWP - 62370
Total - 66260
Non-contest - 33740
I haven't kept perfectly accurate records of contest vs. non-contest QSOs, but the figures above are very close.
Here are the number of QSOs per power used. Be sure to read the notes at the end.
Power OtherCalls K3WWP All
0.05 1 1
0.06 1 1
0.07 1 1
0.10 11 11
0.20 3 3
0.25 45 45
0.50 3 144 147
0.60 2 2
0.70 104 104
0.80 4 4
0.90 237 237
0.93 847 847
0.99 9 9
1.00 107 107
1.50 12 8 20
1.70 1 1
1.80 6 6
2.00 6 66 72
2.10 8 2 10
2.20 6 6
2.50 12 6 18
2.60 6 6
2.80 19 1 20
3.00 12 75 87
3.50 7 3 10
4.00 68 279 347
4.80 1 1
5.00 5226 73100 78326
7.00 22 22
8.00 124 9 133
12.00 358 358
15.00 19 82 101
18.00 7 7 14
25.00 1 1
30.00 142 142
40.00 1 1
50.00 2 2
60.00 14 14
70.00 6 6
75.00 33 18657 18690
100.00 61 3 64
150.00 3 3
Total 5642 94358 100000
5W&less 5392 75057 80449
>5W 250 19301 19551
%QRP 95.6% 79.5% 80.4%
In most cases, I never noted what the power was from, just the number. Some may be power input while others (for the most part) are power output figures. Here is a rough idea of some of the powers.
75 watts (input) are my KN3WWP powers along with early K3WWP (pre-1980) powers.
100 watts are testing other ham's rigs and current USS Requin powers.
150 watts are from testing other ham's rigs.
A lot of the 2-3 watts or so are probably from when I used the KX1 rig.
The less than 2 watts powers are from experimenting with QRPp and also from a little transistor rig I used in my Pittsburgh apartment.
I'm not sure where a lot of the other powers are from. Maybe some day I'll peruse my records more thoroughly to see if I can find out.
How about how many of my QSOs came from my CQ? This stat will not be overly accurate since I often don't note whether or not I called CQ to get the QSO. About all I can say is that the numbers listed here are minimums and there may be many missing.
KN3WWP/K3WWP QSOs from my CQs - 16493
Other Calls QSOs from my CQs - 1763
Total - 18256
I know there are many more than are listed here, but....
Stay tuned for more analysis of the 100,000 QSOs. Anything you would like to know? Email me.
