It's a wrap... another 10 GHz & Up contest in the books.
 

August weekend:

On the first weekend in August me (VA3TO) and Peter, VA3ELE were joined by Rene, VE3UG from Montreal. The weather was very hot (~90°F) & humid on Saturday and overcast on Sunday with some hard rain in the early part of the evening.

We started on Saturday roving the north shore of Lake Erie from West (EN82RA start) to East (EN92FN) and Lake Ontario on Sunday mainly around the area of Prince Edward County (FN03VW start). Tropo conditions were fair at best but we were able to reliably work K9PW, K8ZR and a few others throughout the day as they roved the south shore of Lake Erie.

On Sunday we were fortunate to have some storm cells to the west which provided rain scatter opportunities that we were able to capitalize on with the help of K0SM's rainscatter.com page. That netted us a couple of long haul contacts with KB8U and W8BYA among others.The contact with W8BYA brought me my personal best DX on 10 GHz at 672 km ! The high humidity took its toll on our 24 & 47 GHz counts but we managed to make some 24 GHz Q's via rain scatter. 

September weekend:

The conditions on 10 GHz over the September weekend were abysmal due to a cold front that moved in to the North-East. The morning temperature was just below freezing with frost on the ground and the temps remained cool for the whole weekend.

After a 7 hour drive from Toronto to Granby, Quebec south of Montreal on Friday night, me and Peter started out on Saturday morning in FN35QI at Mont Shefford hoping to get some new calls and distance points in the log from the groups out on Block Island, Martha's Vineyard and others in the east. We were joined by Rene  VE2UG and Pierre VE2GT. Unfortunately the RF Gods were not on our side. The only contacts we made from this location were short local paths. It was like operating in an RF vacuum, a big contrast from last year when we made tropo contacts up to 618 km from this location.

We continued roving west working the guys back on Mont Shefford, otherwise it was slim pickings with quite a few failed attempts. We finished up near the Ontario border (FN25OB) then did a late night drive back home to Toronto since we were planning to spend Sunday along the East end of Lake Erie, hoping to make some long haul contacts with stations out West.

After reading the reports by other stations in the area, Hepburn predictions showing no improvement to tropo conditions and no rain in the forecast (potential rain scatter), we reconsidered our strategy. We decided to rove the west half of Lake Ontario, working the captured group of stations back in Toronto and across the lake in Western New York with a no nonesense hit-and-run approach from as many sites as we could fit in.

Conditions were slightly better than Saturday and our quantity-over-quality plan seemed to pay off. We also managed to work K1RZ and K3WHC in FN21BE a few times which included our best DX of the weekend at 376 km. Our last contact was at 11:49 pm with K0SM.
Unfortunately there weren't many other stations with 24 or 47 GHz to take advantage of the lower dewpoint so our September QSOs were made almost exclusively on 10 GHz.

Our numbers are down significantly from last year but we made the best of it.

Highlights:
- Improving my personal best distance on 10 GHz to 672 km (August).
- Operating 47 and 122 GHz in the contest for the first time.
- Working K9PW across Lake Erie @ 99 km on 47 GHz using a bare mixer xvrtr (125 uW and no LNA).
- Enjoying the beautiful remote parks & beaches along the lower Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Seaway.
- Lots of bad jokes & belly laughs... I had a great time roving with Peter and Rene. .

.                 QSOs     Best DX (km)
10GHz:      157                672
24GHz:       28                 133
47GHz:         4                  99
122GHz:       2                   1  

Total QSOs = 191
Unique Calls = 48  

73, Hugh