Another busy year of HF operation with frequent contacts, often daily. Band conditions have been fair to good most of the year with some stinkers where best I could do was FT8 digital mode. With my compromise all-band and inefficient antenna plus a lot of background noise here, the bands have to be fairly good to make decent contacts, specially on lower frequencies.
Activity remained focused on hunting US counties, then adding new states on all bands in CW and phone mode, and, as always, pursuing DX as I find it.
Main accomplishments were working all states (WAS) by phone and adding three more states to the completed counties list. Here is the cumulative summary of achievements (2016 thru 2023)…
On the DX front, confirmed countries year over year as follows:
2023
2022
The grand total at end of the year is 142 countries with one on 60m that doesn’t count towards DXCC (Cape Verde). I’m way behind on requesting cards from these foreign countries, so I should have 138 or more.
Domestically no significant changes to the US States award (confirmed via QRZ for all 50 states). ARRL’s Worked All States (WAS) award does not recognize 60m band so less satisfying. The state tally of all bands and all modes looks like this, year over year:
2023
2022
WAS on 80m remains elusive; I got a better (longer– 63ft) antenna up in 2021, but 80m performance hasn’t been notably better than the older 32ft antenna. Looking to somehow fit an 80m dipole in the yard, which might help if it can be bent into functional shape, hopefully in 2024.
On CW (Morse Code) I already had a WAS CW award via LoTW, but managed this year to get it on a single band (20m)
2023: 50/50 (+0)
2022: 50/50
2023 was a good year for phone work (mainly adding counties), but the big thing is that I finally got Alaska and Hawaii confirmed via SSB to achieve WAS phone award. Now have all 50 states confirmed in QRZ and LoTW:
2023: 50/50 (+2)
2022: 48/50
2023 saw fulfillment of this long-term goal of working and confirming all 50 states in LoTW to achieve the Triple Play Award (confirmed all states in CW, phone, and Digital modes). 
At the end of 2023 my QRZ page shows the WAS status by mode and band as follows with 2022 for comparison:
2023
2022
2023 was fairly good for hunting US counties as my primary goal. My year-end total is 2451 confirmed out of 3137 counties (78.1%). My 2022 tally was Continue reading
2021
2021
2021: 49/50 (+4)
2021: 43/50 (+33)
2021
2020
2020
2020: 45/46 (+5)
2020: 10/11 (+1)
2019
2019
2019
2019
2019
AF5NP 