My New Year’s Eve party was typically tame and as is my custom, I was in bed before the ball dropped last night. I did not participate in Straight Key night even though I do usually enjoy that. I haven’t even been on the air these last few days making a clean break between years. 2026 begins my 49th year as a licensed amateur radio operator. A journey that’s taken me from being the youngest ham in every room to being that grey-haired curmudgeon moving a little more slowly.

I’ve come to learn that the best way to enjoy this hobby is to reinvent it from time to time and the best way to do that is to change the script on occasion. That’s one reason why in 2026 I’ll be using the 20 meter band along with the human modes, CW and SSB, exclusively. It’s a grand adventure, my own propagation study on the queen of the DX bands without the distraction of multiple bands and mode choices. At the very least it should be interesting and that’s good enough.

Despite many years in this hobby chasing a multitude of entertaining facets, my own personal quest for working DX only got underway seriously in 2022 when I began maintaining a log, the first since my Novice days. Looking back at the results of these last four years I’m less than pleased to see so much of my time spent using digital modes. You can slice and dice it any way you like, but I’m an old 20th century radio ham (proudly!) steeped in the ways of tradition. For me, 100 DX contacts via CW are worth considerably more than 100 DX contacts using digital.

This chart for 2026 is going to look significantly different from the others if I am successful this year. I don’t care about the number of QSOs made, 200 total contacts made would seem a terribly boring year of radio activity though if that yielded 200 unique DX contacts, that would be highly efficient and interesting!

Ham radio operating stats like these are just the kinds of ephemeral minutia that keep it all interesting for old timers like me. It’s of zero value unless you happen to be playing this game too. And that’s okay. Our hobbies are supposed to be diverse and bring us joy while occupying our spare time. For some that might be collecting rocks, for others it’s collecting DXCC awards.

Neither matter when you’re in the grave, but while we live, DX IS.