12/10/2007 | K5BZH My fear was that ten would be dead throughout the contest window. When the contest started, signals started surfacing, the activity lasted for over 3 hours! What made this even nicer was having to tolerate some QRM during the first hours of the contest, who would have guessed that QRM could be considered a blessing?

Upon getting a nights sleep and checking the band the next morning, I found it appeared dead. Checked it off and on through the day, not much in the way of activity. What few decodable signals I heard were from stations I had already worked.

Throughout the day I heard what sounded like N5LUL here in Amarillo practicing Morse code. He later told me he made about 3 additional contacts from calling CQ so many times.

The band opened the second day about around 0000Z and stayed alive again for over 3 hours again. I had hoped for a lot more time, but truthfully, this was better than I expected.

Never heard anyone from the W1, W2, or W3 call districts during this years event. Didnt hear any Canadians either. Only DX heard was XE2S.

It hit me that not all of the 599 signals were shall we say equal? Some were rather weak and hard to copy while others, like W0WP, were pretty loud. QSB on a few didnt make it any easier. I noted that W4NZ put a really big signal into the Texas Panhandle.

I made 90 contacts, all CW and worked 23 states plus Mexico. Not a big showing, but certainly worth the time spent.

73, Jim -- K5BZH