Exactly one year ago (15th of May 2020) I made my first QSO on HF, this was with Vladimir R2AL in FT8 on the 20 meter band. Since then I have made 5273 QSOs of which 3323 have been confirmed by QSL.
In total I have worked 142 different DXCC entities of which 136 have been confirmed. All these contacts were made on 11 different bands of which 10 are HF bands, the other being 6m. This first year the 40m (43%), 20m (30%) and 80m (14%) bands proved to be the most successful in making QSOs. All contacts were in one or another digital mode, most often FT8.
This first year I have made calls to every continent except Antarctica, where I have been heard regularly, but not completed a QSO. Also the worked distances travelled are very varied, some QSOs were with fellow amateurs living here in my town, a QSO over sometimes not more than one kilometre. My record maximum distance is an FT8 QSO with ZL3IO with a distance1 of 18434 kilometres.
Quite decent results given the fact that I work with a simple home-built end-fed antenna hanging out of the attic window.
1 Distance as measured between our two Maidenhead locators.