"Doug Smith W9WI" wrote in message
...
Highlights:

- Evening Russians on 20. Some of them are amazingly weak, but they're
all good at the code and *persistent*. They never give up. And they
sure make things interesting.

- The "bottomless pit" of Canadians Sunday afternoon. Every time I
thought we were about to run out of people to work, another handful of
VE3s, VE6s, and VE1s would show up.

- Likewise for Spain. I think I worked *every* Spaniard who knows the
code on Sunday afternoon.

- New ones on 80. TG0AA, PV8DX, ZA1A, Z32XX all in countries never
before worked on 80. Getting awfully close to that 5BDXCC.

- European opening on 40 at noon EU time. Worked a bunch of G's, DL's,
and Scandanavians between 1030 and 1200z. Didn't expect to hear
anything except the Americas and Japan at that hour.

- VK6's worked - VK6LW on 40, VK6DP on 20. VK6 is about as far as you
can possibly get from Tennessee without being on a ship.
================================================== =======

Lowlights:

- Murphy. Antenna switch that wouldn't switch to 160 and wouldn't stay
switched to 40 or 80. Worked the last half-hour of the contest on the
2nd radio Windom because the remote switch wouldn't reliably select the
40m rotatable dipole.

- People who don't know what country they're in. I'll pick on N0IW
because he was the one op persistently lid enough when I was enough
not-in-a-hurry to listen.. DX station kept sending "JA2? AGN" and every
time he did, N0IW dumped in his call. I'm sure he wasn't the only lid
who didn't know what country he was in...

- Intentional-QRM frequency thieves. At least three stations tried to
steal my CQ frequency. Yes, I'm certain they weren't cases of
propagation changes or people who couldn't hear me.

Worst case involved 9Y4ZC. 20m was open *everywhere* - I was getting
answers from Europe, all of Russia, Japan, Australia, Africa, and South
America. Someone sends a "QRL?" *dead on* my QRG - I respond with a CQ -
and he starts CQing anyway. After 2-3 minutes, I realize I'm not going
to be able to hear callers anymore and slide up about 700Hz.

At which point ZC spins his antenna north & comes up about 40dB.

You're going to have a REALLY HARD time convincing me he didn't know I
was there. Too bad there's no way to gather reliable evidence for a
disqualification....

================================================== =======
Lowlights aside, **I LOVE THIS CONTEST**!
--
Doug Smith W9WI
Pleasant View (Nashville), TN EM66
http://www.w9wi.com


Had a great time myself. I too had some wonderful highlights.

- Worked Iceland, Tunisia and the Faroe Islands. This is the first time
EVER that I've heard any of them on the air in any mode. And worked the
Iceland station on a 10 meter band that was largely closed down at the time.
Also worked several other new countries for me.
- Worked the Russians over the pole and yes they are good. I was amazed at
what they could pull out but I didn't do too bad either to pull them out.
Here in Michigan, their signals were very distorted.

Of course the lowlights
- Stations that abandon you if they don't get your call on the first try
- Stations that seem to be deaf. They are hitting you at 10 over 9 but
can't seem to hear you at all.
- Stations that don't listen to what the DX is asking for.

Although I only worked 114 stations, I had a great time. I wish my CW were
stronger as some of those stations were incredibly FAST. At least one of
them was going at not less than 40wpm and I'm only good to about 20. But
one can catch the call sign one letter at a time if need be.

Onward and upward to next year.

Dee D. Flint, N8UZE