ARRL 10m Contest 2013 and 2 new ones!

Friday night turned out to be a bust. I didn't even stick around to have contacts with any locals. There was zero DX for Me in the far north but Saturday and Sunday was a different story. I took care of some chores Saturday morning and then had My first QSO logged with OQ4T from Belguim at 15:23 UTC. It was an endless stream of DX on and off till early evening. I would have a nice score if I had stayed constantly on the air but snow removeal chores and other obligations kept Me in and out of the shack. A typical interrupted S & P operation for Me- but a very fun one at that.
I did notice some strange propagation both days- not surpriseingly My Ground mounted vertical did real well with Dx and My Yagi at 20 ft was the clear winner for domestic contacts. I'm not familiar with using a Yagi for HF contesting ( its great!) and maybe this is not unusual but many signals were way stronger broadside. Must be propagation causing this!
I also was able to add two new DXCC's--Corsica and South Africa to bring My total confirmed to 105. ZS4A from south Africa was a neat contact- found Him tuning up so the Beacon networks hadn't spotted him yet. I had zero competion for the contact which was good- He was very lite on the S meter.
I didn't achieve as many QSO's as I wanted but it was the funnest 10m I've participated in. 156 Qs for around 17,000 points!
73---Tim