I have sent my updated QSL card confirmed (no LoTW ever used by me for any awards) CHAL column # to Pat W5VY, since it has been 1½ years ( August 2021) when I last updated CURRENT country numbers.  Since some ADXA members have reports of > 340 countries on certain bands, it means some are using deleted countries in totals too. Lot of great chasing over many decades for sure.

  Therefore I have spent almost 3 weeks going back to 1973 and checked my QSL confirmed deleted country “bands”. Very difficult chore. Bands per se were not important for me back then in the 1958- early 70s. I doubt trying to get some deleted country extra bands confirmed would be possible now, as I told Pat, since the operator or a QSL manager would likely be dead or lost the logs.

   Some deleted countries worked I did not send for QSL confirmations for all bands worked in those early days and only QSLed for the CW and SSB QSOs for DXCC endorsements, which usually involved 2 bands and sometimes I thru in for a rarer 80/160m QSL. I started chasing WARC bands a little later then most, so fell behind a bit on those bands initially.

   I have a current country DXCC CHAL total of 2982 (only 21 added the past 1 ½ years) and just today, after 3 weeks, finished going thru 20+ log books checking for DELETED countries confirmed on as many bands I could find, likely overlooking a few. Two small old logbooks are lost somewhere! I have 108 deleted confirmations from 36 deleted countries I have, dating back to 1973. Adding that to my 2982 gives me a CHAL # of 3090 which will include some deleted DXCC entities bands being confirmed.

I thank Pat and Glenn for keeping up with the CHAL column whether deleted + current countries or current only. This will be my last CHAL report since I am slowing down chasing DX a lot this past year and definitely will not be chasing bands for sure now. There is no way I will be able to catch up with a couple of ADXA chasers who are way ahead of me already and a couple who will be past me at the end of 2023, especially with great Cycle 25 SSN and increased propagation on upper bands. I am stopping at 3090 all time DXCC country bands I have confirmed and no energy to send for a possible 10 more from an old QSL manager who I might could run across, send $$ etc and then put cards in my multiple card file boxes. No more.

  Turning 80 years old in a week and Earl N5ZM is close behind me by a couple of months. He can verify the energy and time required to keep “up there” chasing DX every day on every band and mode, etc etc..  But that is part of the DX game we play if we are able to continue and the wives don’t get mad etc. 👍😂

  Sorry for long ADXA comment here but not much DX going on for now until Bouvet comes on soon. Hope did not interfere with DX spots by ADXA members.

73,

San Hutson  K5YY  ✌

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