This page is archived. It was last modified in January 2012 and it will probably not be updated.
Summary
As I noted in my review of 2010, the completion of my PhD brought with it a resurgence in my activity in the hobby in the latter part of that year. That increased activity has continued into 2011:
January
My main activity in January was supporting the Camb-Hams in their entry in the RSGB Affiliated Societies (AFS) Super-League:
I operated in the 80m CW contest from Flossie as G3PYE/P. Together with G3ZAY (at G6UW), G7VJR and G4KNO, we came in 24th place of the 91 entrants.
A few weeks later, I operated as G6UW in 80m SSB. Together with M0VFC & M0TOC (at G3PYE/P), G3ZAY (at G3PJT) and G8TMV & M1BXF (at M1BXF), we came in 6th place.
February
February started with another entry with the Camb-Hams for AFS. I operated with G3ZAY at G6UW for the Camb-Hams Team B in the 70cms AFS. Together with G4ERO & M0VFC (at M0VFC) and G4BAO, the B-team came in 11th place. The Camb-Hams A-Team came in 7th place.
At the end of the month, I made 39 QSOs in the French Coupe du REF contest.
March
In March, I made 202 QSOs in the ARRL DX SSB contest. I came 10th of 23 English single operator stations, and also had a completely clean log (no points lost in adjudication) for the first time.
April
April started with a trip to the Lake District to activate some summits for SOTA with G3ZAY, M0TOC and M0YCS.
At the end of the month, I travelled to California for the Visalia DX Convention and to activate Santa Cruz and Santa Catalina islands for IOTA. The activation of Santa Cruz was a pretty major disaster, but I made 134 QSOs from Santa Catalina, which wasn't bad for just a few hours.
June
As every year, I helped run the communications centre for the Dartmoor Discovery Ultra-Marathon with the Dartmoor Radio Club, ensuring that approximately 160 runners got around the gruelling 32 mile course safely.
At the end of the month, I went on an IOTA DXpedition with G3ZAY and M0TOC to Inishmore and Inishbofin on the west coast of Ireland.
July
In July, I assisted the Camb-Hams operate as G6PYE/P in the VHF National Field Day. We came 7th of 17 entrants in the Open section.
August
In August, G3ZAY, M0TOC, M0SKI and I went to Snowdonia to operate from a couple of summits for SOTA.
September
The month started with Field Day at G3PYE and, a couple of weeks later, a visit to the Foire Radioamateur de La Louvière in Belgium; my first time at this interesting rally.
September also saw my main DXpedition of the year, to Saint Pierre et Miquelon (FP). Six of us made 17,500 QSOs in about 5 days, with 4 stations.
October
As every year, I visited the RSGB Convention in October, where I gave presentations on the things I'm working on for rsgbiota.org, and on the FP DXpedition.
At the end of the month, I again organised the entry in CQ WW SSB from M4A. This was very successful: results aren't out yet, but it looks like we have substantially beaten the English record that we set for our category last year.
November
In November, I made 100 QSOs in the RSGB Club Calls (1.8MHz) contest, which was the first AFS Super-League contest of the 2011-2012 season. This put me in 19th place of 128 entrants. When combined with the other Camb-Hams A-team scores (M1BXF & G8TMV & M0ZXA at GX3PYE, M0VFC at G8IDL and M1ACB), we came 3rd out of 59 clubs entering.
I attended the RSGB's EGM in Birmingham, where I was pleased to see that the resolution to create the Interim Board was passed.
I also made 10 QSOs in the CQ WW CW contest.
December
The 2nd AFS Super-League event was the 144MHz AFS contest at the start of December. I made 93 QSOs.
I also made 104 QSOs in the ARRL 10m contest.
This month I was also interviewed by Suzanne N1SUZ for the South Coast Amateur Radio Service training sessions. The 90 minute interview, about IOTA, was carried live on a number of repeaters across the US East Coast.
And, although I wasn't on the trip myself, I am acting as QSL Manager for the GJ6UW DXpedition to Jersey, which also took place in December.
Additionally, I have been doing a lot of work on the rsgbiota.org website for the Islands on the Air website during the year. The improvements should go live in spring 2012.
Looking forward to next year, I have planned trips to the VERON Dutch National Radio Flea Market in 's-Hertogenbosch (my first trip here) and to Freidrichshafen (my last time at Europe's biggest radio rally was in 2001, so a return visit is long overdue). The only DXpedition in the diary at present is the Camb-Hams trip to Mull at the end of April. I have also (finally) joined Raynet, so I expect to be doing a lot more radio for public service during the next 12 months.
The report below is generated for QSOs made as M0BLF only. Other callsigns I used during the year are not included.
Between 01-01-2011 and 31-12-2011, I made 649 QSOs to 51 DXCC entities (countries).
QSO totals by band/mode
--------------------- ------- Raw Totals Band % --------------------- ------- BAND CW PH DATA ---- -- -- ---- LF 0 0 0 0 160m 1 101 0 15.7 80m 2 1 0 0.5 40m 2 55 0 8.8 30m 2 0 0 0.3 20m 14 105 0 18.3 17m 3 1 0 0.6 15m 3 114 0 18 12m 2 1 0 0.5 10m 9 95 0 16 6m 0 1 0 0.2 VHF 1 136 0 21.1 --------------------- Mode %: 6 94 0
DXCC totals by band/mode
BAND CW PH DATA TOTAL ---- -- -- ---- ----- LF 0 0 0 0 160m 1 6 0 7 80m 2 1 0 3 40m 2 13 0 15 30m 2 0 0 2 20m 13 14 0 27 17m 3 1 0 4 15m 3 6 0 9 12m 2 1 0 3 10m 3 3 0 6 6m 0 1 0 1 VHF 1 8 0 17
All-time new DXCC Entities in 2011
The following stations were all-time new DXCCs for me:
QSOs by Month for 2011
Document changes:
2012-01-01: Page launched.
