Let me be the first to talk about activity.  I can only say that I wish there were more activity, but there's not much an individual can do about that.  The combination of religious, sports and other distractions will always be with us, but there are still new operators getting on and operating.  My station is better than it was 5 and 8 years ago, yet I cannot surpass the scores of those years due to many quiet spells where just no one new is looking for contacts within my field.
Enough rant, I really enjoy improving the station and making things automatic and better.  This is the time to test the latest innovation.  This year I added deep search, below the noise floor waterfall producing greatly improved searching for "the weak ones".  It was truly a pleasure to use and
did produce contacts otherwise lost.
Meteor scatter and even one moon contact was a great highlight of this contest, along with some nice 2 meter openings to our south and south west.  Stations ordinarily difficult to log were S9, that was a blast.
Not nearly as many rovers, but I am deeply grateful to those who were out and about, thanks so much.  In the closing hours I strove to break out of the 500 qso count and just barely made it.
Looking forward to some DX contests now, and then the January VHF event.
Phil K3TUF