Enjoyed another great ARRL 160 meter contest, and after 39 years as a ham I still get excited with every CW contact made (especially on 160 meters).  The low QRN level (no thunderstorms in the US) helped make up for the somewhat poor propagation.

Operated a little under 19 hours using my 35 year old Kenwood TS-180s, 68 foot base loaded TX vertical (wire hanging straight down from a tree), 55 short buried radials, and 3 small pennant RX antennas which produced 744 QSO's (low power, unassisted).  Total score = 114,228 points (76 multipliers of which only 5 were DX).

The addition this year of a Hi-Per-Mite active audio filter (205 Hz bandwidth), and RTL-SDR pan adapter helped offset some of the deficiencies of my old rig.  Sure hope to purchase a modern transceiver in the future that has narrower filters with better dynamic range in an attempt to improve my score.

Thanks to everyone that contacted me during the contest, especially the unexpected calls by EI2CN and TI5W.

73,

Don (wd8dsb)