Every year I try and decide how much time I should put into preparing for this contest. Since I am now semi retired, I thought it would be an ideal contest to operate. Weeks before the contest took place, I started making postings, looking for skeds. With countless hours spent, I had 45 skeds a week before the contest. With another week left, I probably would have stopped at 60.. Then the problems started on Tuesday here in the Pocono's. Snow turned to freezing rain, then drizzle, and to top it all off, Wed was 12 hours of fog. I could see the antennas become thicker as the day went on. All this fog, and 30 degrees, was devestating. I waited until Friday morning and decided to cancel all skeds. With temps hovering in the 20's there was no sign of a meltdown. On Friday afternoon I decided to fire up three amps at very low power levels. I started at 50% return. For long periods, I sent a beacon signal with my auto keyer. Little by little, the 200 watts from the 8877's started melting the DE's. By Friday evening I had the lower four bands able to be used. The loop yagi's on 903-3456 were hopeless. The contest started with the normal stations being worked. No special propagation in any direction. As the evning wore on and temps fell to below zero, the bands got very noisy.. I switched to 144 EME on Saturday on moonrise, and was hearing nothing. I almost thought there was something wrong with my system. It probably was ground noise, since when the antennas were elevated to 20 degrees, as the moon rose, I started working many stations. Nothing like Dr Joe K1JT though. Sunday morning without any scatter skeds, calling CQ on 50.260 was a waste of time.. On Sunday afternoon at 2pm, I thought I would try 903 and 1296. How about this, the wind must have dried the DE's, and even with a higher than usual SWR, I was able to at least make some microwave noise. I worked a few guys but I really thought I would be busy. NOPE NOPE NOPE. The guys I normally would have worked, must have had football games to watch. Activity on the bands were steady, but I could not find enough stations on 903 and up. One highlight was excellent conditions towards Detroit on Sunday evening. I worked a bunch of guys out that way through 432, but nothing on 903 and up. I felt even though my DE's were OK, the antennas were still very much iced up. Directivity was NOT the norm. I have no complaints about this contest, since I thought I would be sitting out the entire thing.. Long Live Bear Creek, Pa. Really gets nice here in the spring. See everyone in the spring sprints. My antennas might be deiced by then. I do want to thank everyone who was willing to give me a sked. I just did not want to hang guys up.

73's Herb at the WA2FGK Contest Station