Everything seemed ready to go last night at 8:00 when the contest started. I had the first two hours. Since 20m was open to Europe and the USA, I started there. I got a great frequency to call CQs and put about 300 contacts in the log. Dennis and Ray followed and were able to stay right on that frequency. When I rotated back in, I switched to 40m and did pretty well. Then the wheels came off. Common practice is to try 80m on the hour overnight. When I went there I discovered that our 80m dipole didn’t work as well as we thought. Its SWR was very high. I was able to tune the dipole using an external antenna tuner that I sent down here years ago, but that caused lots of RF in the shack. The stray RF got into the logging computer and drove me crazy. (Yes, I serve cheese with that whine.🤪)

Oh, and at some point we killed our second K3 around sunrise, so we are down to one station.

And did I mention the huge solar flare/eruption that is disturbing propagation?

we stand at something over 1300 contacts.

Oh, and the picture is my view as I write this.😁

73,

George