ARRL DX

Thanks to K3LR and K1LZ, for giving us someone to 'chase'. It makes you perform better. 'Would-a, could-a, should-a' is a well known phrase here.
As many have already stated, you really couldn't ask for better conditions. Obviously, the high bands were the highlight of the weekend and it shows in everyone's scores.
Have never worked as many JA's as this weekend; they seemed to be everywhere. This was our highest QSO total EVER! And, I was very pleased that we kept up with the multipliers.

Glad this one is behind us. Just too much last minute stuff to deal with. Just about dusk on Friday, we discovered that part of the pair of 160 meter phased antennas had come down. One of the top loading wires had broken and was hanging down against the vertical radiator. I wasn't involved with the attempted 'fix-in-the-dark', but I can attest that it wound up a mess. The 160 antenna was mostly un-usable Friday night. More like a remote dummy load than an antenna.

Well, as they say, 'Another one in the books'. I found this to be an enjoyable contest, for a change. With the contest being the next weekend after the CQ WPX RTTY contest, most of the station work we could do was done prior to that contest. This made the week between contests much less stressful for me.

As always, a big part of any of our contesting efforts is enjoying the camaraderie of those with a like passion for contesting, especially CW contesting. The spirit of camaraderie was in abundance this weekend. We had a guest op, Don, K6ZO, who we met at the Richmond hamfest. He rode down from DC to spend the weekend in front of a radio. We also had Matt, W4GO, come by on Saturday, to meet the gang and get a feel for the station.

This was a pleasant change. In the past, I've lamented because they're a bunch of guys that operate from with varying abilities and we just never could get a good, solid team together. I guess the stars were in alignment, as we could not done any better with the number and abilities of the ops that participated. At the end, we still had 7 ops sitting in front of radios. This was the first time most of the ops dealt with the two stations on a band.

Had a pretty good time, overall. Had enough people and plenty of food. 160 meter 8 circle is still 'AOL'.  Frustrating! Beverages worked really well.  The recent work with filtering and switching paid off. Lots of QRN from far off thunder storms Saturday night.  Made things really tough at times on the low bands.  When the storms causing that thunder arrived on Sunday about 1700 UTC, the rain static from hard rains made things difficult on 15 and 20 meters.

Wx was a player in this weekend's operating. With the extreme cold, 4 operators could not make it due to wx related issues at home and another two to limit their time here. After receiving a few more inches of snow during the day Saturday, the snow turned to sleet in the evening. The 80 meter delta loop array collected ice and was detuned enough for us to quit using it. 15 meters showed a slight rise in reflected power, but not enough for concern.

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.