WWFF Parks Hunted per year

Looking in Log4OM Awards noticed you can apply a date filter to an award, so for the WWFF award I applied filters for each year from 2012 to the present, and entered the total number of parks worked each year into a spreadsheet.

There were not many WWFF park activations until 2015, when a lot of parks got added, including the ACT Canberra Nature Parks.

The slump in 2020 was due to Covid 19, put a stop to activating parks...

I retired in 2021, giving me the chance to hunt parks on the weekdays. Peak seemed to be around 2023. The solar cycle tends to affect park activations worked too. Having peaked in 2025 would expect this year to be down, although there are more park activators now which might help bring this up. 

WWFF VK8 Parks Worked

There are 70 WWFF parks in VK8, Northern Territory.

Statistics on parks worked per band

A total of 18 parks or 25% total parks worked.

Interestingly the most popular band is 10m. The 40m contacts were all around Alice Springs, at the Southern end of VK8. VK8 is quite rare for me, I hardly work them, even not in parks. 

Map of VK8 parks worked. Mainly around Darwin and Alice Springs.

WWFF VK7 Parks Worked

The next State to make a Log4OM award for was VK7, Tasmania. It has 323 active WWFF parks.

Breakdown of parks worked per band

97 parks worked and 30% of all parks worked. Seem to mainly work mainland activators on holidays there, although there are a few VK7s active. Most contacts on 40m. 20m is actually too close for me, it's only around 600 km or so to Northern Tasmania from Canberra. Southern Tasmania is about 800 Km away, so can work VK7 on 20m around Hobart.

Map of VK7 parks worked.

WWFF VK6 Parks Worked

Western Australia, VK6 has a total of 544 WWFF parks active. List in Log4OM Award.

Statistics for VK6 parks worked per band.

20m is the best band. Due to distance 40m is quite hard, mostly made to Southern Western Australian parks in the evenings.  Only a total of 28 parks worked, or 5% of all parks worked. Just hard due to distance and not many activators.

Map of parks worked in VK6

WWFF VK5 Parks Worked

Next State to look at was South Australia VK5. A total of 489 active parks.

Far enough away from me to make good use of bands above 40m, although 40m still the most popular band. 20m works well. A total of 235 parks or 48% worked.

There are not that many parks compared to Eastern States, however the ones there are very large, eg Lake Torrens, Flinders Ranges. Map of VK5 parks worked.

WWFF VK4 Parks Worked

Next State to get WWFF park statistics on is Queensland, VK4. From wwff_directory.csv found it has 712 active parks.

Statistics for parks worked on each band

A total of 196 parks worked or 27% of all parks worked. Surprisingly 40m still the most popular band, as Queensland would be workable on 20m or higher bands, suspect most activators stick to 40m only.

To North Queensland 20m and higher would be the better choice over 40m.

Map of VK4 parks worked.

 

WWFF VK3 Parks Worked

Continuing my State analysis of parks worked, used wwff_directory.csv to get a list of all Victorian, VK3 parks. Filtering only active ones got 3112 parks. 

There are a lot of WWFF parks in VK3! I have logged contacts with 665, 21% of them

Once again 40m is the best band, 30m works well too with 49 contacts. 80m is a useful band for Eastern Victoria, not that far away from Canberra. 20m is usually too close, only just far enough away for parks in Western Victoria. Have struck the odd sporadic e opening though, working into Melbourne and Gippsland parks on 20m.

Map of park contacts into VK3 Victoria, pretty much all over the State.

WWFF VK2 Parks Worked

Having done an Awards page in Log4OM for VK1 Parks, decided to do Awards pages for the other VK States and Territories. For a list of parks downloaded the WWFF master directory of all parks in the world, from the WWFF.co website wwff_directory.csv. From this extracted a list of all parks in State VK-NSW and also parks with Status Active only. Ended up with 1011 parks in NSW. Created an award from the list, looking at the QSOs Sig Info field 

Statistics of NSW parks worked per band.

As expected 40m the most popular band. Quite a lot of parks on 80m too as I used this during the last sunspot minimum. 20m is mostly too close but starts to work into Northern NSW into Canberra.

476 parks out of 1011 means I have worked around 47% or almost half of the total parks. 

Map of all parks worked in NSW. Not many contacts into NW NSW, mainly desert and properties.

2025 year in review

Clublog has a Timeline feature, so you can see how many QSOs you make each year, type and countries worked. Here is mine.

A record number of QSOs for me in 2025, also a record number of DXCCs worked at 105. The jump in phone contacts probably due to a heap of park activations made driving to and from Queensland in the winter. The jump in countries due to me concentrating a bit more on 20m, I have ignored this band in the past as it can be dominated by big gun stations, with a simple dipole and 100w I am struggling to be heard. Anyway, was able to do quite well on FT8 mode.

WWFF VK1 Parks Worked

Having worked a lot of VK1 WWFF parks lately, thought I would check which of the 50 ACT parks I have worked. I created an award in Log4OM, here is a screenshot of part of the result

VKFF-1774 Kinleyside Nature Reserve is a privately owned nature reserve with no public access, so unable to work it. 

VKFF-0983 Bimberi Wilderness Area is a remote park in the far Southwest of the ACT. My only contacts were on 2m FM with SOTA stations on Bimberi Peak and Mt Gingera.

So have worked all 49 of the VK1 accessible parks.

2024 Clublog statistics

A look at QSO statistics for 2024 in Clublog.

Generally worked less stations on both Phone and Data than 2023, but a record number of DXCC countries, 102, compared to other years.

QSO statistics up to 2023

With a rainy day decided to extract some statistics from my logbook, I like stats...

Countries worked per band. Note I just got to DXCC, 100 countries on 17m and 30m. 10m will be next with 90 countries. I get very few new countries on 12m, 15m, 40m and 80m, mainly due to just dipoles on these bands.

WAS per band. 10m and 10m are on 50 US States, 17m only have a couple more to go with 48 States.

QSOs per band. See 40m is the most popular, mainly from park and SOTA chasing and activating. 10m is next, my favourite band.

QSOs per continent. Not surprisingly OC, Oceania where I live most popular, followed by NA, North America, following the seasons. Asia is always easy to work. Europe rather seasonal. Africa and South America are rare for me.

Total QSOs per month. A big spike in October/November last year. Sort of seasonal as bands pick up in the equinoxes, also depends on what else I do other than make QSOs.

Statistics for 2022

 Time to look back at 2022 on the radio, statistically speaking.

A plot of QSOs per band. 

I mostly have QSOs on 40m. Lots of these would involve portable park hunting and activating.

Next is 10m, my favorite band. You can see it does go quiet in the winter from June to August each year.

The 30m band is next most popular, mainly because it is open some mornings to Europe. I quite like 30m.

The other bands dont get used much.

Countries per band

I have 127 countries total, which continues a slow upwards trend. The 30m band with 93 countries had overtaken 17m as the best band for DXCC. The 10m band, with a few false starts is climbing up nicely with the total now at 79

US States per band

Have 50 US states on 40m and 10m now. Only a couple more needed on 17m with 48. US stations seem rare on the other bands.

Continents per band

No surprise here, the most popular is OC, Oceania my home continent. NA or North America is mostly on 10m, so is seasonal. Asia is there almost all the time but does get a kick when 10m opens and the JAs find me. Europe comes and goes with the seasons too. Africa and South America are quite rare here in Australia.

QSO Statistics for 2021

At the start of each year I like to go through my logs and pull out various statistics for QSOs for previous years. Gives me an idea of how I am going for various awards, and can see if the bands are improving. Plus I like to dabble in stats :)

A plot of counties worked per band.

Seem to be stuck at around 118 countries for the last 4 months. Now getting harder to work 'new ones'.

Best bands are 30m, closely followed by 17m. Recent openings on 10m have seen some new ones.

A plot of US States worked per band

I have finished WAS, of all 50 US States on 40m now. 17m only need a couple more. A large number of US States recently worked on 10m, a sign that the new Solar Cycle 25 starting to take off'.

QSOs per Continent

Only just started collecting statistics for this for 2021. A big spike in OC mid year, and spikes for NA and AS later in the year. AF and SA continue to be rare for me here in Australia.

QSOs per band

Only collected for 2021. A spike in 40m mid year. 17m a bit later. Good to see a lift in QSOs on 10m, which had been quiet for so long.

WWFF parks and grid squares in Australia

Having chased WWFF many park activators in some fairly rare VK locations, thought I would try mapping out all my WWFF park locations, displaying their grid squares in Google Earth on Australia.

This is fairly easy to do using my logging program Log4OM. First I set up a special Search Parameter, finding all contacts where the SIG field is WWFF. All my contacts with WWFF parks have this Adif field set to this value.

I can then display just WWFF park contacts in Log4OM. Changing the layout can see the SIG and SIG INFO fields, the SIG INFO field has the park number worked.

To fill in Grid Squares, for each park used the ParksnPeaks website, Parks link to look up each park, which in the park details has the Grid Square. eg for VKFF-0618 Alfred National Park, the Grid Square is QF42qk.

After filling in all park contact Grid Squares, selected them all, and used the "Plot KML"button to plot them all out in Google Earth. I chose to use 4 digits only and 3D View based on QSO count.

Here is the final result in Google Earth, displaying all Australian Grid Squares that I have chased a park in.

The park activations grid squares worked line up with population density pretty well, for overseas readers the population of Australia mainly live close to the West, South and East Coasts, the Centre of the continent is mainly desert and sparsely populated. I do have a few out of the way parks though.

There are peaks in parks numbers worked in Adelaide, Melbourne, Canberra and Sydney Grid Squares.

Heres how I'm going so far for each call area/state

VK1 - ACT

Easy, all in one grid square, QF44. I do also live there :)

VK2 - NSW.

There is a shortage of grids worked in Western NSW, probably due it being semi-desert and not many people. I have worked some of the remote areas though such as Sturt NP in the far North West corner. Surprisingly have not worked any parks just North of Canberra in QF45, although have worked Amateurs there, eg in Yass. Also a hole in the Coast in QG60 around Grafton, but have worked stations in this area, just not in parks. Probably take some time to get them all...

VK3 - Victoria

I have got the whole State covered! Its a small state rich with Parks and Amateurs to activate them.

VK4 - Queensland

Mainly in the South East and some up in far North Queensland. Its a really big state... Have to wait for expeditions to fill in the gaps...

VK5 - South Australia

The South East, where most of the population lives is well activated. There have been a few expeditions to say the Flinders Ranges to get some of the inland squares.

Some of South Australia is restricted access, eg Woomera and Aboriginal land in the North West, so will be hard to get all squares.

VK6 - Western Australia

A vast area with most of the activity around the South West corner. To activate parks in the North looking at weeks of travel to get there... Have managed to get a few rare grids though.

VK7 - Tasmania

Although small it will be hard to make park activations on the West Coast, wilderness with no roads, and long tough walking to get to.

VK8 - Northern Territory

Despite a few park activations have not worked any yet. Most is desert and low population, and permits are required to enter aboriginal land. Plus its too far away to reach on 40 m here in the daytime, so need good propagation on say 20 m to work.

80 m daytime propagation

With poor propagation recently on 40 m there has been a move lately to activating SOTA and WWFF parks on 80 m during the day. I have wondered how well this might work as I have assumed the sun during the day increases D layer absorption and blocks lower frequency signals, yet I have worked stations on 80 m during the day.

Decided to test 80 m propagation by measuring the signal level of a constant transmitter, the VK2WI CW practice beacon in Dural Sydney. This transmits 24 hours on a frequency of 3.699 Mhz and provides a handy beacon about 250 Km away.

A search of the net found a suitable S meter logging program, S-Meter Lite by Greg W8WWV. This is freeware. On installing it found my Kenwood radio isn't supported... A bit more googling found a workaround, using N4PYs Pegasus software to get the S meter signal, feed this into a virtual crossover modem, made with another program called VSP Manager, and fed the output of the virtual modem into S Meter Lite. A confusing mess of virtual com ports that I eventually got working... :(

After sorting out the software side set up S-Meter Lite to log to a csv file, and collected S meter readings on the Dural 80 m CW beacon from just before sunrise at 6:55 am, past sunset at 5:24 pm, stopping the program at 9pm local time. Opened the CSV file up in Excel and created a chart.

Here is the result. I've marked sunrise and sunset.

I used some attenuation to help scale the signal. Note the low noise floor, S1, just before sunrise. Initially the Dural CW beacon was low, but shot up around sunrise around S6 to S7. So did the background noise, up to S3-S4... The signal came in quite well, with some QSB, eventually fading away into the noise around 12:30 pm, and returning around 3 pm. The signal continued to build, peaking a bit after sunset at 5:24 pm, dropping down around 7pm to a steady S4 to S5.

So you can use 80 m during the daytime for SOTA/WWFF activations, just avoid the afternoon!...

The CW beacon is not the most steady of signals, as it transmits CW at varying rates, making it hard to get a steady signal on the S Meter. Might be better to use a broadcast shortwave AM signal close to the 80 m band as a beacon instead, something to investigate.