09/19/2002 | W4ZV Very strange contest for me! I was debating whether to do it at all since my
XYL had an out-of-town guest. The weather forecast looked rainy for the weekend
and then they decided they would rather use our season symphony tickets for a
"girls night out" so I decided to go for it and not feel guilty.

I had my rate sheet from my 2000 record in front of me and Friday night
started out poorly with 190/19 compared to 251/29 in 2000. Saturday morning
started with a bang and I had my best SSB hour ever with a 217 hour at 1241Z!
Then things quickly slowed down and I became sandwiched between two loud EU
stations. I tried moving much higher in the band but that didn't help much.
The bottom line is that I only had 3 hours above 100 compared to 7 hours in
2000! Saturday night was also poor and I was now 1471/114 versus 1818/116 in
2000 by the time I QRT. Sunday morning started slowly and Bernie W3UR at W3LPL
stopped by and asked how I was doing before the band opened to EU. I was
SHOCKED when he said they had about 1900 and I was still just under 1500!
Sunday was slow even though I moved high in the band and I never had ONE hour
above 100 compared to 2 in 2000. I ground out the rest of the day and
maintained my 400 QSO deficit compared to W3LPL and about the same compared to
my 2000 record (2577/127).

The only bright spot was all the truly exotic DX that called and I had 8
more mults than in 2000. If I could have made about 200 more Q's, I might have
broken my record, but I honestly still do not understand what I would do
differently. I finished down 12% in Q's compared to the average of W3LPL
(2634), K9NS (2559) and KC1XX (2345) and I'm normally much closer. Anyway it
was a fun way to spend a rainy weekend and thanks to everyone for the QSO's!

73, Bill -- W4ZV