The end of another month means taking stock of how the DXCC adventure is progressing. I’m currently standing at 126 worked and 113 confirmed (mixed), the gap between worked and confirmed having widened by a few more this month.

Not much progress from last month though there were confirmations received for 3 ATNO’s during July. The big mover was band slots confirmed towards the DXCC Challenge. A thousand are required to earn the award and that remains far enough down the road that it’s difficult to even imagine.

Still, I added 42 to this total during July bringing me up to 350. With five months left this year and a few big DX contests coming up I can imagine having 500 by year end…

So far this year I’ve worked 91 DX entities, a total I keep separate for the DX Marathon where the worked country total resets every January 1st.

Through the month of July I have made 1539 total QSO’s split almost evenly between CW and digital. Assuming a decent run to the end of the year I expect to have added about 3000 total contacts to the log in 2022. Not a large number for some, but a very successful year for me, most of it coming after I retired in February.

Not surprisingly I’m seeing a higher rate of return (LoTW confirmations) from the digital work than from CW. My DXCC (confirmed) totals for digital currently stand at 84 and for CW at 80 with one deleted entity. I anticipate completing DXCC CW and digital by the end of 2022.

On the domestic front I still need four confirmed phone contacts (AK, ID, SD, UT) to achieve Worked All States Phone. I already have WAS CW and Digital. I hope to knock these out by the end of the year which will result in obtaining the ARRL Triple-Play Award.

There remains plenty of work to be done, on the air and off. Continuous improvement of the station and antennas has yielded tangible results and right now I’m feeling pretty good about these efforts even though I’m late to this game.

Most of my work this year has been on 20-17-15 meters. Now that we’ve moved past the solstice band conditions will begin to change heading into the second half of the year. Shorter daylight hours means 80-40-30 meters will begin their ascendancy and I want to be prepared to take advantage of that before the leaves have fallen.

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