Well, another 10GHz+ contest is in the books!  This was my best effort ever, and certainly the most fun ever!

The first weekend, I traveled to FN02nu on Saturday (the Tifft Nature Center) on the shore of Lake Erie south of Buffalo, NY.  This spot always provides lots of QSO's with the W8's in Ohio and Michigan, as well as the VE's from the Toronto area.  This year was no exception- plenty of 10GHz Q's.  Unfortunately, only 1 24GHz QSO- usually I can count on 5 or 6.  But the best DX of the day was a rain scatter QSO with K1RZ at 417km!  On Sunday, I went to my old favorite FN02xu, which is Transit Road in the town of Pavilion, NY.  The top of the road is at about 1350'ASL and has good shots (depending on which side of the peak you're on) to the south, east, north, and to a limited degree, the west and southwest.  Once again, plenty of good QSO's- I even sneaked another QSO with K1RZ on pure troposcatter at 400km.  Later in the day, I had an easy QSO with W1AUV on Mt. Equinox, VT at 402km for the best DX of the day.

Fast forward to the second weekend.  I decided to go to New England, and to hit more mountains than in the past.  I had Rus K2UA along, who has become re-invigorated on the microwave bands, and he managed to put together a 10GHz rig that ran 2W to a 20" dish.  He was excited to join me and try to make contacts after about a 25 year hiatus!  We started early Saturday at John Boyd Thacher State Park (FN22xp) south of Albany, NY.  This is a great spot- as soon as we were set up, we hooked up with N1JEZ who was on Mt. Equinox (FN33kd).  This netted QSO's on 10, 24, and 47GHz SSB for me- Mike was REALLY LOUD!  K2UA worked him, too and was happy to find that his "thrown-together" rig worked and worked well.  We also had easy QSO's with FN41ee and FN41oi (Block I. and Martha's Vineyard) on a knife-edge path.  Later in the day we made the trip to FN32kp (the Eastern Overlook on Mt. Greylock) where we were joined by Pete K2AEP and made a bunch more QSO's on 10GHz.  We spent the night in Bennington, VT and then early Sunday, headed for FN32ou- Hogback Mountain, VT where once again we made many great QSO's, all on10GHz..  Around lunchtime, we headed for FN33kd (Mt. Equinox) which was our last stop on the trip.  We worked N1JEZ (in FN44ig- Mt. Washington) on 10 and 24GHz, with great signals on both bands.  We also managed to work the folks on Mt. Kearsarge (FN43bj), which was blocked to us by the building on the top of the mountain, by using a rain scatter path we discovered.  We headed down the mountain at about 4:30pm, as they close the road at 5 and we weren't interested in being stuck there overnight!

All in all, it was my best result in this contest ever, and I got to say hi to a lot of good microwave friends I've made over the years.  I ended up with 97 QSO's and a total of a bit over 21k points.  K2UA did extremely well with his small station, working 52 stations on 10GHz!  Thanks to everyone who worked us or tried to work us- you made the contest that much more fun!  And a special thanks to Tommy W1AUV for sharing so much good intel about the spots in Vermont- we wouldn't have been so successful without your knowledge!

See the pictures and look for us next year!

73

Dave K2DH