Collecting Colonies

When I was a kid, I remember my dad had these small blue card-stock books where he collected pennies. One round slot for each year back to whenever, and all of the special variants -- wheat backs, etc..   It was a neat collection he started when he was a kid I guess.

This 13-Colonies "contest" reminds me of that.

While each Colony (state) is workable, it's fun to be able to fill the slots on each one for each band and mode.

Perhaps it is just the special significance of the 4th of July holiday is the draw.

I've worked them all on CW so far.  I just need a couple more on SSB complete those columns.

I've also worked the special WM3PEN station on CW but not on SSB yet.

And the two other "DX" special call signs  GB13COL and TM13COL are (to my best knowledge) only worked on SSB or FT-8 at this time.  That may change, I hope.

Adjusting my preference to work CW over SSB lately has highlighted something that I noticed when I was trying to work the SSB K2x stations.   The mosh-pit of the pile up on SSB is incredible.  I guess that is how it has always been.  I should know because I used to focus on SSB and those pile-ups remind me of all those years of trying to wiggle through.  The east coast is especially difficult to work SSB sometimes.  Being near Seattle, I contend with the loud stations in the south west, and mid-west.

100 watts from Seattle to the south west can yield a report of +20 to Arizona -- that pipeline still amazes me.  But the same signal strength to the east coast is just noise to them most of the time.  Even when I raise the power to 400 watts I'm just about S-5.   No big deal.

I'm going to try to round out the list for the SSB contacts for the colonies I need.  I'll hope that the DX (GB13, TM13) stations are workable too.