12/08/2008 | K6EI I had fun running QRP and beat my personal record in terms of total QSOs in the contest, although my multipliers and total score were less than last year. Working stations east of the Mississippi was a real challenge this year with only Wisconsin and Illinois achieved. Although I could hear a PJ2, UA0 and several JAs, my 5 watts limited my "Worked DX List" this year to Hawaii, Alaska and Mexico.

A never-ending challenge for this contest is the local noise environment. Each evening at 5:15pm our neighbor turns on a huge front yard Christmas light display which contains hundreds (seems like thousands) of little colored LED lights. And simultaneously the noise floor on 160 meters jumps by a couple S-units. Sigh. The good news is that the Christmas light display is off by midnight, so things are quieter for the early morning hours. Hopefully next December Ill be able to borrow a K3 for this contest. Im assuming the K3s IF stage DSP does a better job of electrical noise suppression than the audio stage DSP in my old Kenwood.

Jim -- K6EI