Since my HF operations have been relegated to the IC-705 and its ten watts of RF energy for the month of December, I didn’t expect to add an all time new one to my DXCC cache this month, at least not until the IC-7610 returns from the shop. But it happened anyway and I couldn’t be more pleased.

I’ve worked less than half of “all of them” at this point in my DX adventure so it’s not surprising that I might still stumble across an ATNO. But these have become fewer and farther between. This one happened like several others in that I didn’t realize it wasn’t already confirmed. I don’t work from a list, my process is more like panning for gold. I work all the DX I can find, upload those contacts to LoTW and hope they are confirmed. When they are, and on occasion, these confirmations turn out to be something needed which generates graceful happy dances and dignified hollering.

I was in the shack a few days ago waiting for the ten meter band to perk up after its night time slumber.

Once it did, there was a lot of DX singing the FT8 song. So much so that it was tough to find a spot to squeeze a signal into so I switched to FT4. My use of that mode has been growing recently for two reasons; it’s not as crowded and it’s faster. I don’t know why more operators don’t take advantage of it, but I’m glad they don’t. More room for me. I’m watching stations scroll down the screen while cherry picking only what I think I might need to fill band slots. A task made more difficult since adding 13 new confirmations on this band over the last 30 days. Put it this way, nothing screamed “ATNO” at me. I saw a station in Crete (SV9) calling, and while I was certain I had previously worked Crete, I thought it might be a new one on ten meters so I worked him and moved on.

It wasn’t until a little later I noticed Crete wasn’t just new on ten meters, it was an all time new one. I had worked Crete before, but this was the first LoTW confirmation I ever received for it. Imagine that. Crete isn’t rare DX, it’s number 274 on the Most Wanted List, right between Iceland and Mexico, according to Club Log.

There’s wisdom in that eternal DX truth - “it’s rare if you don’t have it”.