ARRL 10M Contest 2014

Conditions were beyond any 10m opening I've ever experienced and I wish I had more uninterrupted time to participate. I had been watching 10m conditions during the previous couple days and realized Friday night at the start I needed to be ready to go. Watching the Dx spots and listening before Friday showed a band that at this northern Latitude was closing 45-60 minutes after 0000 UTC so unless I could find many locals it would be very difficult to have a decent start.
I was ready Friday at the start and just like predicted the band was already closing at the start and My last contact for Friday night was a paltry 28 minutes after the beginning. I am only doing a SSB effort but was curious so I tuned down to the CW area and heard many signals so if I had been doing a "mixed" effort would have afforded Me more chances adding to the log--oh well!
Saturday and Sunday were a total different story. Conditions were better for Me Saturday but Sunday was still amazing. I feel extremely lucky to experience these conditions before the cycle winds down--wow. I felt occasionaly like a big gun station- breaking pile ups and having nice signal reports. Even had nice audio and signal report from one California Ham!
I did an S & P operation because of the time spent in short bursts in between other obligations. I usually find the fringes of the bands the most productive for Me so I started high and worked lower most of the time. Seems a little more casual away from 28.400, where lots of contesters tend to congregate.
I use two antennas for 10m- a Butternut ground mounted vertical and a Hygain 10m monobander at about 20 feet. I operate a Yaesu FT-950 at 100w and use N1MM classic as My contest logger. I noticed a big improvement with signals using the Yagi so almost all contacts were on this antenna. When the bearing direction would appear in My logging program I typically swing the antenna that way but during this contest that was not always the strongest signal. Many times broadside was giving a better signal than aiming directly at the other station--weird. Made for an interesting time!
This was a very fun contest and I contacted several new DXCC's so i hope they confirm thru LOTW. There were many memorable contacts but I think the most satisfying one involved a station in South Africa. I happened to hear a huge pile up and finally realized it was a ZS- South Africa but after just a few attempts i realized the futility of trying to break thru the east coast wall so I moved on. Incredibly tuning down I found someone tuning and lo and behold- I thought I heard him give a ZS call sign. I gave My call and He came right back and We exchanged the contest info and i asked again for His call.Yes- He was a ZS call and he was in My log.Cool!!
I had a respectable score of 34,694 and was very happy to have participated!
73--Tim