ARRL DX Contest 2013

A solar flare preceded the start of this contest and conditions Friday night were just terrible. A "K" index of 4 is very poor and the bands reacted because of it.Sunpots were down around 88 and even the "A" index was high.  I spent very little time fighting conditions Friday evening and had a few contacts before calling it quits for the night.
  Saturday was a fair improvement in the morning and I bounced between 10m and 15m before settling on 10m for a very good S & P operation. Ten meters actually for Me was very good from 1700 UTC and I stayed with it till the band closed before sunset. The lower bands weren't very good at this location for the rest of the contest when I was on. I managed some hard fought  contacts on 20m and 40m but none on 75m or 160m which was disappointing because I heard HK1NA on 160m at about S9 but they just CQed in My face! 100w just wasn't enough I guess. I truthfully didn't stay up late enough Saturday for any decent chance at contacts on the lower frequencies but that is typical for Me-- hard to stay awake!
  After Church Sunday morning and Lunch I was back operating but it was again not great conditions and lots of stations I had already worked.It wasn't till later I heard from several other contesters about the short but good opening to Europe on 10m while I was away! Oh well-priorities!! I had some interesting contacts such as OA4SS who commented on the number of Minnesota stations. If He only realized some of them were playing Dx at V4,VP5H and KP2 land!! All of which I had contacts with-- I guess for them zero calls are easily heard!
  I worked KP2M and 8P5A on 40,20,15 and 10m for the highest multiple band contacts. I worked 88 countries (DXCC's) and had 193 contacts for a score of 50,952. Not too shabby for a ground mounted vertical and a 10m monobander at 20 feet using only 100w!  My rotor was stuck South for My 10m Yagi till early Saturday after the sun came out and it thawed.   My CAT port on My Ft-950 is still not working so I had to be careful and switch it manually in the N1MM logging program so it would log the correct band. Its so much easier when its atomatic!
  I hope to add several more new DXCC including French Guiana who I worked on 15m. Several others are the same countries but different calls who maybe will be LOTW users. One can only hope!
73---Tim