The recent DXpeditions, etc have given me a bunch of new and rare places (at least for me). After 150 or so countries/entities I have gotten many new African countries: Mali, South Sudan, and some others. (barefoot SSB)

But I do claim the zed zed somehow can be heard in a SSB pileup snarl. Otherwise my call is a huge amount of syllables. I only call once (brain surgeon method) but sometimes the DX is answering someone well before I finish!

I sometimes crush pileups with just plain luck and my unique call, KD8IZZ. The DX can hear the Zed Zed in the madness of the pileup. "How about that Zed Zed?" is a reply I have heard many times.

I have always been SSB, 100 watts with a 3 element tribander at 20 feet. Consequently I transmit at a high angle and possibly that may be what gets to the DX better at times.

After 5 years of low power and medium grade station I have reached 164 countries/entities.
Mali, South Sudan and Angola where the latest ATNOs. And Bolivia of all things was a recent ATNO.

Someday I'll reach China/India.

I reached them on 20 meters last week. 59 into Ohio. I got them on first call with my 3 element yagi that is only at 20 feet.  100 watts SSB.
They must have a good station on their end!!!

I have experienced wonderful behaviour a few times while trying to reach a DX station.

Once the DX replied to my sub-average station and had a question I couldn't understand. Some helpful Christian replied "your name your name!" and saved the day. It was an illegal transmission I suspect but I forgive him because I finished the contact with the help.

There is a Texas state park contest this year I believe. I hope its as fun as the Ohio state parks contest.

Georgia, then Michigan followed by Florida.
3 of the biggest contests on consecutive weekends.

I need to get the 80m dipole up this week!

Albania.

I need so much of East Asia still, and that is NW out of Ohio

I have about 150 countries SSB now but I still need Albania and Vatican City. (and Armenia and Palestine which I wouldn't call easy)

10 meters was almost completely empty for me during the contest, but I may have missed a early morning opening. I did get some ATNOs for 40 meters around 0300 local, Australia and New Zealand into my low dipole. Go ahead and laugh but it was exciting for me.

This should be a good chance to get some new countries. I need so much of Asia still and a few easy ones elsewhere. However, I'm not optimistic about 10 meters being open.

Since I became a ham 4 years ago I have kept my log in an excel spreadsheet. I record the time, exact frequency and call. This probably slows me down in contests but it helps when you run a frequency like I do during the Ohio QP (always over 300 contacts). Later I use QRZ to fill in the city, county, state, country and grid.

The spreadsheet allows me to keep track of counties and bands/countries etc. It's become a huge spreadsheet with almost 20,000 QSOs.

If you didn't already think I'm insane, I also use the QRZ address to plot the callsign in Google Earth for all my contacts. Color coded for the band, of course.

Late at night during the contest I was hearing some Asiatic Russian stations but about half couldn't hear me. Drat.

There's a central Asian contest this weekend, never heard of it before. I'll be using a nice vertical antenna this time so I'll have something for 40m. Depending on the propogation I will be working the Alaskans in their contest too.

Turns out its in reality an international contest. I've reached more Poland than Russia! LOL
Need to balance this QSO party with the VA party. 15m and 20m for Europe and 40m for VA.