Got it all fixed from the big January meltdown.  Well almost.  Missed a lot of good 6M openings doing it all it too.  I have one 222 antenna I cut out of the stack that reflects back whatever power is transmitted and 902/3 is still a little deaf, but all in all the station is QRV again on 8 bands.  Even better, it remained so for the duration of the contest.  There was lot of activity here this weekend, unfortunately not all of it was on the bands.  Saturday dawned with thunderstorms that rocked the house.  Warming up the station I noticed the east fixed 6M antenna had a 2:1 SWR and an intermittent connector.  A quick assessment revealed that I had inadvertently used a piece of 9913 water hose, disguised as a third party brand.  An ohm meter revealed that it had lived up to its reputation and was wet inside.  Thought I'd pitched all that years ago.  Luckily there was a break in the rain before the contest and I got that changed out in time.

Just in time to be hit with the daddy of the earlier thunderstorm just as the contest was starting.  Besides the lightning crashes, the precipitation static out here in wide open farm country is just amazing, often lighting up the S meter with 20 over 9 hash.  The main antennas were all but useless for the first two hours.  It's been known to blow up preamps here before so I unplugged everything except the low 6M antennas that were below the trees.  It would not be the last time I had to do this during this contest either.  I have a 5 el on a 20 foot pushup pole with a TV rotor and two fixed antennas, one on FL and the other on the East coast. With 6M open to the NE, FL and to the SW, I managed to log Qs between the static crashes for almost two hours on these antennas.  But without the big antennas it was impossible to hold a frequency for long and I'm sure I lost out on quite a bit being forced to hunt and peck.  The lighting crashes make for lots of repeats!  That was a recurring theme all contest as the storms would slowly approach and recede.

When it cleared the first big Es wave had pretty much died down so I went to 2M, found some rovers and ran some bands.  The next wave of Es came soon but it was to less populated areas in the SW and W.  As the pickins would die off, I went back to 2M and ran the bands with several stations.  The next wave of thunderstorms weren't as strong and only put me off the air for a half hour.  6M remained open to various places off and on the rest of the day on into the night and I kept chipping away at it, going back to 2M and above when things would dry up.  Worked some Caribbean and even found a small 2m Es opening to FL.  Except for the first hour I never had another NE opening to really drive up the rate and put the bigger numbers in the log.  

Made all of my WSJT skeds.  I didn't get as many requests this year and several of my emails went unanswered, even from stations that had contacted me for a sked!  I did manage several randoms for new grids who I also QSYed to 2M, so it was worth staying up the extra two hours after the activity died off.  I was still hearing Es well into the night, but mostly heard stuff I'd already worked and my CQs largely went unanswered. I got 3 hours sleep and was back at it early, but it was foggy and the bands all seemed really depressed.  432 was a chore and anything above was all but impossible to any distance. 

6M started opening to the SW and stayed open off and on for most of the morning.  Pretty much the same stuff to the SE and the SW, and runs would peter out quickly.  Openings to FL and TX aren't all that productive after the initial rush, there only so many stations to work.  By 12 noon 6M was starting to surge again just as next wave of thunderstorms I'd been hearing crackle all morning finally descended on me and put me completely off the air for almost two hours again.  This was the kind of storm that signaled its approach by a steady 10 over buzz on every antenna that began even before the rain static hit.  It was the granddaddy of the ones from the previous day!  It just opened up and poured down rain!  I had to just give it up for a while until the rain quit, and sat on the porch with good cigar waiting it out.  When I got back it was slow going and a lot of locals called me on 6 to QSY to the other bands. 

N2KMA told me the DSL Internet was out, so I checked it and quickly determined that it was the incoming line that was dead, killed by the last big storm.  I then made a dumb mistake and told her to handle it.  Little did I know that she would actually reach somebody in "Tech Support" on Sunday!   Here she was handing me the phone in the middle of a rover run with 6M just starting to open to the NE for the first time since Saturday!  The idiot on the other end was about the slowest SOB you could ever imagine and I had to tell him at least three times I had already rebooted the cussed router and checked that the stinking wires were plugged in!  Either that or my adrenalin was cranking, itching to grab a spot to CQ before the band filled up.  After what seemed like an hour of trying to deal with him, I was amazed that I found a hole around 50.130 and proceeded to have my only 100+ QSO hour of the contest!  But it changed back to the SW and the SE way too soon.

After that it was just keep grinding out Qs until the end.  The bands seemed enhanced to the east for the last two hours, but I found too few stations with bands over 432 to take advantage of it.  I'm happy that I was able to better my 2008 score, but given less weather delays I'm sure it would have been well over 400K considering how good 6M conditions were.  

73 de Bob