2013

K7SV and I got our 'wires' crossed and wound up going over time badly. He thought I started last and I thought he was going to take a couple of hours off in the wee hours. Only missed it by about 50 minutes.

Operated when I could, on/off over the weekend. Mostly running, with very little S&P. My antennas are better suited for DX than close in stuff. I did wind up learning where I can, and can not, work using the higher angle back lobes of my antennas. Was consistently working the upper mid-west off the back of my SA stack at 35/70 feet pointing @155. Was much better than my lowest rotatable antenna @120 feet.

Good conditions, but there could have been more activity. Activity from SA was notably absent. We got receive 8 circle working (mostly) and 3 new Beverages working within the last few days before the contest, and they were a huge factor in our ability to hear stations. At times, there was considerable rain/snow static, which would have been a pain to deal with, if not for the receive antennas.

Great to see good propagation for the contest. Seemed this was the year for hardware failures, both before and during the contest. 'Stuff' happens. Too much food and not enough full time ops. Of course, if we had the ops, the food would have worked out fine.

Had 5 ops that had minimal contesting or ham radio or n1mm experience, do this operation was a bit less polished than others may have been in the past.  This said, it was lots of fun and much was learned. Conditions were great, especially on 10!  Been a while since it's been that good.  'Roasted' a remote switch box on 10 with all the CQ'ing, the power and 1.7:1 SWR on the stack.  Hey, that's the way it goes sometimes.

The Potomac Valley Radio Club hosted both the ARRL headquarters station, led by captain Steve Bookout NR4M, and the IARU headquarters station, led by captain Fran Donovan W3LPL. Steve's team, operating as W1AW/4, has been spread amongst 8 different stations in North Carolina and Virginia, while Frank's team, operating as NU1AW/3, has been spread amongst 5 different stations in Maryland.

Regardless of condx WPX CW is always fun. This year atmospheric weather was quite good with fairly low noise on the low bands. Solar weather wasn't so good, but that's part of what makes things fun. It was a good weekend to know something about skewed paths!

Thanks for coming out!
Thanks to Steve and Carolyn for the great hospitality! And thanks to the resident Station Engineer Larry.

As we've frequently said before, it's always nice to have new folks operate with us. We has the same Carolina folks with us that did last year (W0UCE and N3ND) plus N1LN. It was great to have both Bills back from Lynchburg. As always the local group was fun, and had fun. Without them on Sunday afternoons, we wouldhave trouble covering bands after the traveling guys depart.

A good time was had by all. Plenty of ops, plenty of sleep, plenty of food, plenty of drink and plenty of propagation. Late in the weeks, LOTS of ugly problems cropped up. Most were taken care of and the couple that were left, were not too bad. Friday afternoon, I discovered a S/N problem that would have killed the whole weekend for us. The crew at N1MM solved it and had a new version out in about an hour and a half. Big thanks to them!