Apologies for such a late report but my internet has been down for most of the week.

With the exception of having a single antenna on 432 rather than the usual pair, and a broken 902/3 preamp, the station held together pretty well for this contest. The weather was really hot here in the Midwest up until a few days before the contest and we had had a lot of excellent tropo to the south and south east the week before. Of course all that went away by Thursday and it cooled way down on Friday.  Ironically we had another nice tropo night to the east a few days after the contest.  My singing insulator problem has still not been resolved by the utility (as repeatedly promised) either. 

The contest started with a successful 7 band run with W9SNR/R.  Possibly due to the mostly dismal Es season and lack of any Es in the weeks leading up the contest, some the rovers and portables like W9SZ did not bring 6M. My only 8 band run was with N0AKC. Saturday was pretty much flat normal and the QSO rates and totals reflect this.  There was no Es at all during the contest either.  Luckily the rox were flying and I made all of my Saturday night WSJT skeds and a few random ones too.

After being bone dry for several weeks it started pouring down rain for 4 solid hours accompanied by periods of lighting, so I was shut down for most of Sunday morning.  Rain static (sometimes as high as 10 over) killed my morning FSK 441 skeds and crippled my ability to hear weaker signals on 6 or 2M.  The rain static on 222 was almost as bad and I even heard it on 432 for the first time I can recall!  WX radar showed a 400 mile long narrow SW-NE band (maybe 20-30 miles wide) that hit my QTH dead center and just hung over me as the storms went through, so I must have been right in the middle of a front line.  By the time the rain quit the normal morning activity spike had already subsided. 

The front line finally went south of me and after it went through it seemed enhanced to the west since I was able to work some rovers out to 300 miles, but there are a lot fewer fixed stations on in that direction. Unless there is something spectacular like Es or a really big tropo event, activity usually drops way down around here on Sunday from before lunch until after dinner.  Between 1 and 2PM it rained again for another solid hour.  It was not productive to the SE in the afternoon due to the front line but I did hear W4ZRZ in EM63 on 144.200 around 6PM. He was right at the noise and another station called me to run 3 bands. When I got back, he was gone.  Otherwise I heard nothing past 400 miles.

There was a little enhancement to the north and NW on Sunday evening when I worked NI0W in EN25 at about 400 miles, but we could only work on 2M.  K0AWU EN37 400 miles to my north was on 2M and told me that the Twin Cities Minnesota stations (EN34) were hearing VE4/5 Canada, but few stations were on.  We had already worked 3 out of 4 bands during our usual sked but were able to pick up the extra mult on 432 on JT-65B via airplane scatter. I heard a lot of buzz on 200 to the northwest, however the few whose attention I could get didn't seem any louder than normal. Apparently I was mostly out of it and the others I heard in the background were probably pointed west. Sadly I wasn’t able to find anyone in EN34, usually an easy grid to work from here.

Luckily K0DAS/R and KC0SKM/R were in working distance to my west and I was able to work them in multiple grids including a great shot to EN11 with KC0SKM/R. Coupled with K9JK/R and W9SNR/R they added a lot of QSOs and multipliers to my score, including a Hail Mary 1296 QSO with K0DAS/R in EN42 just before the closing gun.  Catching KF8QL/R in EN75 on the bottom 4 bands was a real treat too. Thanks to them, KC0P/R, W9II/R and a few old friends that I had not heard on in quite a while, it made an otherwise slow Sunday a lot more bearable.

73 de Bob2 K2DRH