This year, my plan was to beat last year's score of just over 19k points.  To do that from the northeast would be a challenge, given that I wanted to operate as much as possible from Western New York.  The first weekend, I travelled to FN02nu on the Eastern shore of Lake Erie along with John WB2BYP, where we met Tony WA8RJF.  This was a great location last year- it's a park just south of the city of Buffalo, NY and has a great look along the lake and into Canada and Michigan.  Well, when we got there on Saturday, we discovered that the park was under reconstruction to add more recreational stuff and our access to the lake shore was cut off (last year, we parked right by the shoreline).  We still did a good job from there that Saturday, working plenty of VE's and folks up and down the lake shore on both 10 and 24GHz.  There was a bit of rain well off to the south and we used that to work K1RZ on rain scatter at over400km.  Then in the late afternoon, some tropo enhancement occurred along the lake and we worked a bunch of VE's up through 24GHz, some quite loud on SSB.

Sunday was a different story.  I went to my old standby spot in FN02xu called Transit Road, in the town of Pavilion, NY, southwest of Rochester.  This is a great spot, very high, with a great look from north clockwise around to straight west.  But, as I was setting up, it began to sprinkle and by the time the gear was all in place, it was a regular downpour!  I scrambled to get the radios back into the truck, got myself soaked and then the wind came up and chilled me to the bone.  I sat in the truck with the heater on to warm up and dry off a bit, and the rain finally stopped.  But not the wind.  For the rest of the day, the wind blew like crazy, tipping the dishes over twice (fortunately with no damage either time).  That day, I worked a number of VE's again, and had a great QSO with VE3FN at about 300km, and another with K1RZ at 400km.  At the end of the first weekend, I was pretty pleased, but my score was well below that of the first weekend last year.

Fast forward to the second weekend.  Because of my lower score the first weekend, I drove for 4 hours to FN22xp, a place called John Boyd Thacher State Park, near Albany, NY.  I got there at about 0830 and set up on a beautiful sunny and calm morning.  This spot has a great shot to a lot of New England and the mountain tops there, where there were plenty of microwave ops.  I immediatley hooked up with Dale AF1T and his XYL Mickie W1MKY on a path that should have been impossible (see the photo)- it was a total scatter path over the hilltop to where they were on Martha's Vineyard (FN41oi) at 305km.  I also had a number of good Q's with folks on Mt. Wachusett and Mt. Washington.  Longest DX of the day was VE3FN at 400km in FN26rf.  I was joined by Jarred KF2MR and his dad Jerry N2QIP.  Jarred made a number of good QSO's with his smaller station, including the folks on Mt. Washington and VE3FN (see photos of Jarred and Jerry at the site).  I worked Dale and Mickie again late in the day after they had moved to their other spot on Martha's Vineyard- FN41ql.  This QSO was MUCH easier, though it was EXACTLY the same path as the first!

That night, I stayed in the Troy, NY area with Jud K2CBA and in the morning I headed for Mt. Greylock.  It had rained overnight and the climb up the mountain was in fog most of the way.  I got to the top early and decided to wait to see if things improved, and had a nice breakfast at the lodge at the top of the mountain.  At about 0830 I headed for my site in FN32kp on the east side of Greylock and set up in the fog (see the picture of the station in fog).  Things were actually pretty good on 10GHz, though I had my doubts I'd work anything, but I once again immediately connected with AF1T and W1MKY.  They were pinning the S-meter on 10GHz SSB at 241km, so we went to 24GHz, and though we could detect traces of each other, we couldn't make a QSO.  And that's the way it was all day- stations that were loud on 10GHz were undetectable or barely detectable on 24, so I never made any 24GHz contacts and never even got the 47GHz gear out of the truck.  I worked many stations from the east side and at about 1400 local, I moved to a spot with a western overlook (FN32jp) to try to work some of the VE's on the western portion of Lake Ontario.  This was pretty much a waste of time, due probably to the bad weather between us, but I did manage a couple more QSO's, one with W1AIM on Mt. Equinox and one with N2SPI at home in FN22.  At 1700 I finally packed up and started for home, 4-1/2 hours away.

It was a good contest- I had more QSO's than last year, but due to the lack of 24GHz QSO's, my final score is down a bit from last year.  I am, however, a confirmed "New England Mountain Top Addict" and I plan to be back there next year, with hopefully better weather conditions!!!

I hope everyone had as much fun as I did!!!

73

Dave K2DH