I operated in this event again in the QRP portable category from grid FN30 in Long Island, NY.   Prior to this event, I had bought a new car, which came with a sun roof and this would prove to a good place to route the various feedlines for the antenna!  In the New York area, we had significant amounts of snow that was still around but for the weekend, there was no further snowfall, just pretty cold weather in the 20 degree range.  Luckily there was not a lot of wind.

The first two hours for the contest seemed very promising as I heard a good number of stations.  However, it was apparent that there was noise issues and limited distance to be worked on Six Meters that would continue through the whole contest.  One highlight was working KA1ZE in FN01 on Two Meters using CW.  That seemed to be the only unique path for me during the entire contest as most stations were worked from neighboring grids.   Stations that were two grids away were much weaker than normal and it seemed that a number of stations were resorting to CW to be heard.

On Sunday, there was a bit more wind and the three-element Six Meter Yagi took a fall, so I ended up using a large snow bank for planting the mast as seen in the attached photo.  By 11:30 AM local time, Six Meters only had one signal on the band and Two Meters had about three.  There was simply no one to work and after another 30 minutes, I folded up operations. 

I did not observe any Sporadic-E openings on Six from my area.  As I have expressed before, the January event is too long in duration and it should be trimmed.  Also, I would like to see 220 MHz QSOs count for 3 points each to encourage more activity.   Overall, I had fun and the new car was nice and warm in the cold weather.  Despite a promising start on Saturday, I failed to break the 1000 point barrier - there was simply not many stations to work.