I had fun in the contest - did my usual 7-8 hours of a 48 hour contest.  Results were not terrible for a very casual effort - 534 Q's, 205 multipliers, 327,000 points.

15 meters was best with good openings to EU and JA.  I was looking forward to a good EU opening on 10 meters but it never happened.  I got one station here and there, and worked SM, G, F, EA, etc, but there were never numbers of EU stations on 10.  I did work a handful of ZL/VK and it seemed like every licensed KH6. 

The surprise was 160 meters. I have never really had an antenna for that band.  The best I ever did was with my 130 foot zepp with the feedline tied together to make a T vertical. 

I have an EFHW out in the woods, about 200 feet from the house, that I use as a second antenna when I want to monitor on another rig.  I took the EFHW transformer out and fed it against ground as a (sorta) Inverted-L.  There was no counterpoise, only a short ground rod for a static drain for the EFHW.  The wire went up about 25 feet, sloped as it went out to a height of 35 feet, and then came back down.  I thought it might get me a contact with Bill at ZF5T.  I was very surprised to work 13 stations in 10 multipliers, most in Europe.  I ended up getting ZF5T on all bands, and also ZF1A.  The convoluted, much too low, inverted-L performed like a champ!

Kenwood TS-590S, Force 12 C-3 at 56 feet, 40 and 80M dipoles, and 160M inverted-L.  Amp is an AL-811 400-500 watts.

I heard ZN and FUV and FXB a lot.  Also others, I'm sure.  I heard K5UR and W5AAJ - yeah, lots of ADXA'ers on.

73,
Dennis