As always a fun and friendly Contest.  Where people spend time and effort to work all the stations. Especially when you are the multiplier.

Before the event, I spent more time looking through my previous years logs/scores. Predicted and actual hf propagation.  A big help was allowing for aclimatisation after a trans Atlantic flight and moving from sea level to 10000 ft. This enabled me to get the station up and running on it's dipole before lunch.  Not 2hrs after the start of the contest. As in previous years. Unfortunately just at the start of the contest the boom mike and the remote PTT broke.  Loosing me the first 30mins. 

Propagation was different from previous years.  As expected 15m and 10m were open for much of the daylight hours. With propagation moving like a lighthouse searchlight beam across the various Sections. Making them much easier to work with QRP and a dipole.   I made a much better effort to use the 20m band.  As last year I think I only made 3 contacts and this helped. 

I nomally find that 40m is very good for getting to the West Coast during the early darkness hours. With my QRP signals not being heard much on the East Coast.  Due to the wall of the very strong signals working inter East Coast.  This year it was quite obvious that propagation went 'long' very quickly.  There was much East to West Coast working.  With the signals going over my head!! Even Califonian stations 400mls away were much weaker than in previous years and could not hear me. May be I had stayed on 10m,15m and 20m for too long. 80m was consistant and gave me some suprising contacts and multipliers. Especially near the end of the contest.  It is a shame that 160m is hardly used in the contest. I would like to work at least one station during the contest.

With longer time on air. I was able to achieve most of my targets. Both Utah and Delaware eluded me.  I was suprised on how many contacts were made and how close I came to a 'clean sweep'  I still haven't finished my VE7CA wire triband yagi.  Which I want to try as an additional antenna directed to the NE Coast. Although I did some work on it during my vacation.

2012 Sweepstakes will be a hard act to follow.  But there are some improvements I can make to my station. It will be interesting to see whether the hf propagation is the same or better.  Have a good year and hope to work you in Sweepstakes in November.