At first the contest was turning out like June 2013 with no real sporadic-E. We did work Puerto Rico and the Bahamas on
a weak 6m opening Saturday as well as a few grids near the Gulf of Mexico, but no madhouse pileups all day. Then six meters
did finally provide a moderate band opening for a couple hours near the end of the contest. There was no real ducting on
the upper bands, just a quick bit of tropospheric enhancement at sundown on the second day, during which time we worked new
grids EM88 and EM79 on 2m. That was done on the diamond-stack yagis, but overall, the lower omni stack was the star of the
show, especially in the first hours of the contest when we had our biggest pileup yet on 2m (about 20 people calling at
once). After that, propagation became difficult for most of the rest of the weekend with heavy QSB on all bands (plus lots of
lightning static in every direction Sunday). Even so, we used our newly installed hardline to help work 3-digit numbers of
QSOs on each of the upper two bands for a second year in a row (under tougher band conditions than last year). We also had
the highest 222
MHz numbers in the nation.