This was an interesting contest for me, especially having spent my first 2 years on EME with a single, hand-turned antenna in my restricted community.  Then last spring, Pete N8PR offered me some antenna space at his spacious QTH, we put up a pair of 2M9SSBs, and it was heaven, much better signals.  Then this summer I bought four 2MXP20s, and Pete and I (mostly Pete) have been assembling the array, construction photos of the array at www.qrz.com/db/NZ5N .

We finished the assembly on Friday evening, just a few hours before the first weekend of the ARRL contest.  Murphy struck quickly, as the elevation rotor completely stopped working.  So I missed the first several hours of the contest, until noon when Pete went up the tower and repaired a broken cable.  After that, the 4x array worked great, heard and worked a lot of stations on 6 continents.  Well over half the stations I worked were speaker copy, with audible CW IDs, and with veritable symphonies during pile-ups.  A 4x gives far better results than a 2x, and a 2x is far better than a single antenna.  And the ability to switch from H to V, which I never had before, was as good as advertised, several times I had speaker copy in one polarity and zero copy in the other (although more often switching polarity had negligible effect).  Wanted to try cw and tuned a few times between .040 and .060, but no one was heard. 

Did not have much chance to operate over the course of the month, but did check it out Friday before the second contest weekend and all was OK.  However, when I turned everything on for the contest just before moonrise on Saturday, Murphy had struck again, the the horizontal/vertical switching relay was not functioning, so could only operate with vertical polarization.  Then Sunday morning I started hearing a noise coming from the T/R relay on back of the amp, and soon that relay was dead as well.  So I ended up with 90 contacts for the 2 weekends, just short of my 100 QSO goal.

I decided to operate the contest by the rules, which means without internet assistance.  I was strongly opposed to the elimination of the assisted category, and remain so, it just makes no sense, since those who prefer unassisted are not competing against those who prefer assisted.  Many who share this view opted not to participate in this contest, but I decided to give it a try.  Found myself missing the camaraderie of the chat room, and learning about the equipment used by the stations I worked.  Perhaps more importantly, this contest format appears to eliminate QRP stations almost completely.  As mentioned, well over half the stations I worked were speaker copy, and only one of the 55 stations I worked was below -22.  I could have worked stations at -28 or -29 if I knew where to find them.  The ARRL needs to find a way to get smaller stations involved in this, the most important EME contest of the year.

73, Bill NZ5N