The impossible becomes the possible - CW DXCC.
As of today I have 127 countries worked on CW. That’s about 127 more than I expected back when first licensed in 1991! Back then it was SSB all the way even though the 12 word per minute Morse test was still a requirement for access to the shortwave bands.
I do have a few Morse contacts in the log from those early days but they really were few and far between. The ease with which I could make contacts on 10m and 15m SSB meant that there was little incentive for me to knuckle down and spend time perfecting the fine art of CW and achieving CW DXCC seemed nigh on impossible.
Fast forward to June 2007 when, having been back on the bands for the best part of two years, I decided to dust off the cobwebs and get back on the bands with a bit of the old Morse code. I used a cheap old Chinese straight key for a while but then moved on to using the keyer in an Icom IC-703 working CW contests with about 8 watts output into my 20m dipole. I subsequently moved on to a K8RA iambic paddle (a beautifully engineered bit of kit which I am still trying to really become proficient with) and higher power levels (although always well under 100 watts). I also adopted computer keying for contests and DXpeditions where the exchanges are short and sharp.
The net result of all of this is that since June 2007 I have worked those 127 countries on CW. In the same time period I have worked 121 countries on RTTY and only worked 96 countries using SSB (where the overall country total is now at 112). A reflection of the relative levels of activity on the respective modes where, as you can see, SSB is currently my least used mode. How things have changed since those early days!
Dean, that’s not bad at all considering the band conditions under which you’ve accomplished this.
Thanks for those kind words John. I do choose my battles (so to speak) and do all I can to be active in contests where I figure many of the stations on the band at those times will have good ears - that helps a lot!
Being in Europe where I have the benefit of lots of countries within 1500 miles also helps. But as you say, not too bad given the band conditions of the past three years or so.
Cheers, Dean G0RIF