One of the Old Hands in the Benicia Amateur Radio Club talked me into trying the contest, in spite of my minimal equipment.  I tried competing as an FM-only station, using the 6M 'bonus band' in my Kenwood TS-590, but made most of my contacts on 144/432 using a Yaesu FT-60 hooked to a vertical dipole on the roof.  I managed to light up two grid squares, and with lots of other folks on the air in our region, made what I thought was a reasonable number of contacts.

The best moment was calling CQ on 446MHz, and getting a reply from 14 miles away.

I'll try adding some homebrew beam antennas to the mix for September, and see if I can get another grid square on the handy-talkie.