This contest started Friday night and continued thru Sunday although because of a solar flare Friday night was a non-event. There were many signals before the contest started but by time I checked later Friday the band was silent, so I switched off radio and went upstairs. Saturday was much better after sunrise with the band slowly filling up from 28300 to well past 28700 with both domestic and DX. I did notice a huge amount of splatter from adjacent frequencies but in tuning around could not always find the offending station. I wondered if some interference was atmospheric. Another interesting aspect was the lack of direction to complete a QSO- seemed many times the Yagi did better for receiving stations on edge or even off the back. Saturday was my best day with about two thirds of the total QSO's for the contest. Sunday tuning around I had a lot of gray spots on my band map and had to work a little to find new contacts. Sunday also was more normal with directional reception, but signal strength was up and down with one station commenting on how loud I was and the next commenting on needing to pull me out of the noise.
It was a very fun contest with good conditions overall although instead of a strictly S & P operation I should have tried for a run or two. Oh well -158 contacts for 16,748 points was not bad. I haven't checked for any rare DX but I think it was mostly the usual suspects---I recognized many call signs!!!
73---Tim
