We reworked the uhf tower once again, after the January contest the whole array was blown to the ground  from a winter gale. The gale  with  80-90knot winds blew thru here  taking the 1296 and 432 stacks down to the ground, so we picked thu the antennas  straightened them all up best we could and repaired the 13wl m2 on 432  from the 2004 tower collapse thanks to 2 hurricaines a few weeks apart.  Replaced the mast pipe back to pre 2004  and stuck the antennas as high as we could, all fed with hardline. 

I operated 222 432 1296  only this year, not enough time to put other bands all together correctly  2304-10gigs  , + 902 .    Saturday started off slow, n2cei em80 ,k0vxm el98  1st one's in the log  on 222 with good signals and 432mc ,  worked a few more sta's,  aj4gc el96 shows up on 222 and run 3 bands  with him ,the  best 1296 signal ever from him,  used to be a difficult path with a large landfill /dump  mound 200'+ high in line,  now very q5  with his new coax runs. I continue to hear el98 stations fairly loud but not hearing me most of saturday afternoon,  w1lvl el99 pops in 53-57 on 432mc  logged him for a new mult.  then fades away before we could qsy to other bands,    We  shut down for the evening around 9pm  after no more answers  to my cq's. 

 Sunday morning  added 2 more 1296 qso's and hearing n2cei in em80 559 on 1296 cw  then gone drats !   I then hear wb4omg  on 432  a huge  ssb signal  from Lakeland Fla el98 logged and worked  with almost the same signal on 1296,   conditions were not that bad !   k4ly,w4wa were working north and west of here, but did not hear them, only station's working them ..  wow a   tropo opening in august during the contest  not to common. Not long after i hear n2cei in el99 on 432mc  59  worked easily.. in the log... qsy'ed to 1296  579 for a new grid on 1296 ..a good reason to work contests, new grids.  We had to leave for a few hours and  hang out with the family, came back later and no stations until 1850z   oh well ..i had forgotten this contest ends ar 18z on sunday.  I started hearing lightning strikes on 432,  end of contest for me.  The contest robot when submitting my log by e-mail later informs me i have over clocked   past the contest end and please delete qso's  ..nice feature the early log check. 

A fun contest, especially working the guys on 432 222 1296 out 3-4 grids away on cw . It seemed not as many stations on this year none in el97,el95,el86 worked and  el89 quiet now with wj9b gone from the area.