Here we are at the end of 2019!
First I would like to thank every reader for hanging in With Vary Frequency for another year of blogging about amateur radio.
Tomorrow on New Years Day I’m planning to share some thoughts about 2020. As always my focus will be on Amateur Radio.
For the year 2019 over 100 new posts were added – actually I make it as 108 posts, or a new post every 81 hours for the year. With so much time spent station building my writing time was reduced.
In addition to the station building entries, the Thinking Ahead series debuted.
Full blown product reviews were a bit scarce, as with station building bring so many new products into my shack, I wanted to hold off on reviews until I actually used new products enough to have valid opinions.
For 2019 I’ve logged around 5,000 QSOs and have operated from five sites – the Old K9ZW Home QTH, K9ZW Work QTH, my new K9ZW Main (Home) QTH, my K9ZW Island QTH on Washington Island, and George W9EVT’s Washington Island QTH.
Almost every QSO has been done with a Flex-6700, 6600M or 6300.
I’ve had three stations available on the air much of the year, one which moved locations.
I’ve had over 60 loads of gravel, 14 culverts, dozens of railroad ties, 12 yards of concrete and 16 semi trailer loads of brush removed for station building. Close to a mile of various sorts of coax, hardline and wire have gon into the build.
And the XYL still talks to me!
Overall it has been a pretty good ham radio year.
More on 2020 coming up next, and See you next year!
73
Steve
K9ZW
With Varying Frequency - Amateur Radio Ponderings 
I love reading your blog!!! Happy New Year!!!
Thank you for your kind words!
Here’s to 2020! Cheers!
73
Steve
K9ZW
You managed quite a few contacts with all your other work! I’m a piker at only around half that much! Looking forward to catching up in 2020.
I just ran an analysis for 2019, finding my QSO count was 6300 for the year in round numbers. I don’t think I can make enough in the remaining 3-1/2 hours of the year to hit the 6400 mark.
The greatest assist is being able to remote into my stations with the ability to run digital modes. Second is the configuration that lets me do digital from my work desk, which is a force-multiplier in terms of my on-air time.
My 2020 target is to exceed the 2019 number, and to vastly exceed the few hundreds of SSB contacts in 2019.
With the home QTH station build bring more capabilities online, and the planned addition of a tower with permanent antennas at the Island QTH station by mid-year, I will become the limiting factor. If I keep my effective time on the air up I can make my goals.
I have two other 2020 goals – to help at least three (at this stage unidentified) people become licensed, upgrade or upgrade their stations, and to operate at least twice either from a DX location or a noteworthy station.
All best and Happy New Years!
73
Steve
K9ZW
Happy New Year Steve! My respect for one of the few blogs out there worth following these days, Would love to know some details of your stations when possible. Keep it up!
You are one luck man to have the XYL understaning all this and still talking to you :-))
73 from Bavaria Germany. Val DM1TX