Ken Harker WM5R
2008 ARRL 10 Meter Contest - Phone Only K5TR (WM5R, op. )

I was over 27 hours into the contest before I had a QSO total that equaled what I worked in the first hour of the 2007 contest. The only good Eskip I had all weekend was on Sunday, when I managed three 100+ hours in a row.

I never did work Oregon or Washington, and I missed New Jersey, Delaware, and all of New England in the northeast. I only worked two provinces in Canada - Ontario and Quebec. All of my DX multipliers were from North or South America this year, the first time I've failed to find at least one Africa or Oceania station on the band to work.

I struggled both mornings with the wind. The rotator on the 10 meter tower has a broken brake, and the strong southerly winds kept me from pointing the high yagi at South America as consistently as I would have liked. I don't know that that really impacted my totals that much, as the band was not in great shape either morning, but it was frustrating at the time.

I borrowed an Elecraft K3 from K5PI for the second radio, but it never really got a good workout. When the band was closed, the vertical it was using could not hear anything, and when the band was open, I was generally too busy to work the second radio much.

It was nice to work 10 different stations from Mexico. The contest activity from there has been increasing for several years.

Contest Logging was done with TR LOG contest logging software. The following reports and log were created using TR LOG's post-contest processor.

• Rate Sheet
• CBS report
• Multiplier Distribution