Every now and then, I like to test out my communications capabilities. Friday night after dark, I went outside and using a flashlight, strung up a wire, ran it into the spare room downstairs, set up my ham radio, and in the next 24 hours, I spent 14 of them making sure I could talk around the world without using any public communications infrastructure such as phone lines or internet. I even ran my generator for an hour or two.
I only was on the air for a total of 14 hours, so I didn't do as well as two years ago, but here is the list of the 57 countries I was able to contact. I also heard lots of stations in Japan, and they did indicated they heard my signal, but I didn't have enough power for them to understand what I was saying (they were speaking English, but couldn't dig my signal out of the background noise).
I made complete two-way radio contacts (short conversations) with hams in Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cuba, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, El Salvadore, England, Finland, France, Germany, Guatemala, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Jamaica, Morocco, Netherlands, Nicaragua, Northern Ireland, Panama, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Serbia, Siberia, Sicily, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Uruguay, Venezuela, and the island "countries" of Aruba, Azores, the Balearic Islands (off the coast of Spain in the Mediterranean), Bonaire, the Canary Islands, the Madeira Islands (off the coast of Portugal north of the Azores), Martinique, Sicily, St. Kitts and Nevis islands, US. Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, and the Spanish Territories of Ceuta and Melilla (in Africa ...look up Melilla and Ceuta in Wikipedia and learn something new! I did.) I talked to numerous American hams, too, including one in Alaska.
I used all three of my shortwave radios to make sure they are all still working. And... I had fun.