12/12/2006 | K5BZH Friday I agreed to make tortilla soup for the family. The process takes about an hour and half. Realizing we would likely eat around 8:30 p.m. that meant I could check ten meters when the contest started, 6 p.m. local, and participate for about an hour. I figured the band would fade out about then anyway.

The tortilla soup got made, but was over two hours late. I was still hearing some signals when I turned the radio off around 9 p.m. I was really surprised. The band wasnt wall to wall with signals the first 3 hours, but it was pretty active. Could hardly wait until Saturday and Sunday (local). Sort of like getting a pep talk, was primed, gonna have a grand old time the next couple of days!

When Saturday and Sunday arrived you could color me disappointed big time. Contacts were few and had it not been for the CW operations, it would have been really thin.

The Ether Gods were just not with us in the Texas Panhandle. I did note from the serial numbers being passed out that some of the South American stations must have had some great openings. Apparently a few fellows in the states had some good openings too.

I made a total of 81 contacts, had 242 QSO points, 43 multipliers which resulted in a score of 10,406.

73 -- K5BZH