I hadn't been 'up' for many contests lately except for our NAQCC (http://naqcc.info/) sprints. However during the week before the DX contest, I started to get that urge to get back into a big contest with a serious effort. A couple factors entered into that urge. The SF peaking at 125 a couple days before the contest, and changing my antenna coupler/switcher so that I could switch in an RF attenuator on all bands. Previously I could only do so on 160-30 meters, and now I could run 930 mW output on all HF bands. I wanted to see what I could do at that power level on the higher bands.

I'm not going to describe the whole contest here because the full story is on my web site at http://home.windstream.net/johnshan/ in the CONTESTING section on the Contest Stories page. But I will give a few highlights here for those who may not be interested in the whole play by play style account.

A couple years ago I worked my first KH6 on 80 meters with 5 watts and my attic random wire. Two of them in fact. That was exciting. Working 3 KH6's this year on 80 was a little ho-hum, but still thrilling. I wasn't sure the one KH6 got my call correct, so later on just for fun I reduced power to 930 mW and called him again. I got an instant K3WWP QSO B4 from him. Not a real QSO, but my mW power and attic wire made it to Hawaii on 80 from here in PA.

Again a couple years ago I worked Cape Verde on 80 through 10 meters with my 5 watts for a big thrill. This year I worked D4C on 15 and D44AC on 20 with mW power for another thrill.

Working T30YA on 40 plus Curacao and Bonaire on various bands gave me 3 new overall countries to bring my total to 212 worked CW/QRP/simple wire antennas. I worked 37 countries with mW in the contest which was 5 more than I had ever worked previously. Overall my country total was 57 in the contest.

All in all 145 QSO's, 116 multipliers made for my best DX contest in a few years now. 62 of the QSO's came with 930 mW.

Thanks to the ARRL and all the fine operators who participated in the contest. CW is still the greatest mode of all.

73, John K3WWP