It's now a couple days after the end of the contest and I have had some time to reflect on our effort in the contest. Overall I am totally pleased with the performance of the station and the operators. We ran without problems and didn't have to wait in too many, if any pileups, which was a big change for my station.

I think I am going to do a band by band analysis for this one.

10M:

I went to 10 during the 1400z hour on day 1 of the contest. Only had 5 contacts on 10 and they were all NA and all on CW. After I went up to work a mult, I had to stay there 10 minutes, so I tuned around and worked the guys I could hear. I didn't go back to 10 during the contest. In retrospect, I should have been checking 10 more often and may have been able to get more contacts there.

15M:

Running on 15 was somewhat slow, rates never got too good there. We had 100 contacts on phone and 54 on cw. On CW, the continent breakdown was 16 NA, 13 EU, 1 AF, and 24 SA. That shows how the propagation was favoring the N/S path. On phone the continent breakdown was 64 NA, 6 EU, 5 AF, and 25 SA. I think the higher NA total is because we ran on 15 phone and not on CW.

20M:

20 seemed to be a good band for us. We spent the most time on 20 phone, although I did work some 20CW. We had 84 contacts on CW and 442 on phone. On CW, the continent breakdown was 35 NA, 38 EU, 8 SA, and 3 AS. On Phone, the continent breakdown was 270 NA, 154 EU, 1 AF, 12 SA, and 5 AS. I do remember that when we were running on phone, we were working alot of US stations.

40M:

40 seemed to be the biggest improvement in my station since rebuilding it. I spent quite a bit of time on 40CW. Our contact totals were 240 on CW and 31 on Phone. Don went to 40 Phone at 0800z Sunday Morning, so we did go there late in the contest. I think my personal operating preferences hurt 40 Phone. I hate working split on 40 Phone, so I simply didn't operate any phone. I did run on CW, which helped boost the Q total. The continent breakdown on CW was 172 NA, 35 EU, 1 AF, 29 SA, 1 AS, and 2 OC. On Phone the continent breakdown was 25 NA and 6 SA.

80M:

80 CW was not a lot of fun because of the QRN. I didn't put out a beverage, so I had to deal with the noise. The sloper that went up Thursday before the contest was a real winner. We totally skipped doing 80 Phone, which may have hurt the score. I had a total of 134 QSO's on CW. Not too bad, but could have been better. The continent breakdown on 80 CW was 89 NA, 34 EU, 1 AF and 10 SA.

Over all I think the habits I developed while running low power hurt me during this contest. There is a completely different mentality I need to develop for running high power. This was the first contest I have ever ran stations on CW. I think the way the station has developed to this point, it is conducive to running stations in every contest, no matter what mode I choose to operate.