I love CW Sweepstakes, it was what got me interested in contesting and increasing my code speed many, many years ago.

This year, at 2000z I went down to the shack to get everything set up and found my K3 VFO had frozen up. So, I disconnected the 400 cables from the back of the K3, put it on theworkbench, removed the 800 tiny Phillips screws, took took the front panel circuit board out, sprayed the contacts with DeOxit again, reseated the boards, put the 799 tiny Phillips screws back, noticed the one tiny Phillips screw still in the muffin tin, took some out, put that one in, put the rest back in, reconnected the 400 cables on the back of the K3, fired it up - and it was still frozen. A sharp drop onto the desk fixed that and at 2050 I was ready to go.

I usually enter B/unassisted, as SS is one of the few contests where I can hold run frequencies and I want to force myself to run more/S&P less - plus it is just more traditional. But, since I hadn't had time to scope out the bands I decided to go U/assisted and use the spotting to get a feel for the bands. I went straight through from the start to 0600 and only needed NWT for the Sweep.

Sunday morning the weather was too nice to stay indoors all day, but I operated on and off. I was trying to maximize my score for our PVRC club battle against NCCC, so I didn't try to fight the massive VY1EI pileups and never did get the sweep.