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<div>This was not an easy one from Europe! 20m was in quite good shape and stayed open until much later than expected but 40m and 80m were horrible.<br/>
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I had a late start 20 minutes into the contest. On 20m, things went ok with a 10QSO/hour rate for the first five hours. A few stations could never hear me - K8AO and both college radio clubs W8UM and W8SH - but I enjoyed following K8IR across twelve counties before the band closed. NE9U was worked in four counties, W8UE in three and AE8M in two counties. I heard K8MR several times on 20 and 40, quite loud sometimes - too bad that he wasn't traveling on Michigan roads...<br/>
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Not sure what was happening on 40 but Michigan seemed to be cut off from propagation to Europe. NE8P, K8MQP were peaking S5 and still CQd in my face. The East Coast was loud and so were VE3s but Michigan seemed out of reach. Only three QSOs on 40m, all of them difficult ones.</div>
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<div>NA8V made it on three bands (providing my only 80m QSO) and two modes from STCL.</div>
<div>N8I (N8XX QRP from SCHO) was ESP level but we made it on 20m.<br/>
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<div>It was fun overall but I could (should) have stopped halfway through the contest and not lost much of my score.</div>
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Band Mode QSOs Pts Mul<br/>
3,5 CW 1 2 0<br/>
7 CW 3 6 0<br/>
14 CW 48 96 36<br/>
14 USB 9 9 9<br/>
Total Both 61 113 45<br/>
Score: 5.085<br/>
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73! Uli DM5EE (KK8I)
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