The next step was to start driving back north again, but stop in northwestern FN21 to see how well a new site was going to work. It wasn't too spectacular in the elevation department, but it did have better than average open terrain. The main lobe of the antennas probably had a chance to clear the trees in every direction as well as clear the gently rising terrain to the west. I'm not really sure I had a good test of the site this time around because I made only 11 QSOs, but it was, after all, the lowest elevation site of the contest by 240 feet. I think I like it more for the fact that it's a short distance off the main highway and it gets me another grid multiplier as soon as I make one contact. I did make at least one on each band, so that's a lot better than no grid activation at all. I think I will use it again in the future at the start of a contest in order to see if I can make more contacts.
Sunday morning I had a lucky break: The local club hadn't yet finished re-installing their VHF contesting tower and consequently would not be staffing the club shack for the contest, so I got permission to operate my VHF contesting van from the driveway which is only 15 minutes from home. I made 30 contacts in 3 hours. Best DX from here was eastern NH station WA1T FN43 (242 miles / 389 km) on the bottom 3 bands.
After lunch at home, I left for FN23 and finally arrived to a grid activation on schedule. I operated for 3 hours here at my northernmost location for the weekend. The highlight was picking up new grid FN03 on a couple bands, thanks to K2LDT/R who I haven't worked in years. The low point was discovering while tearing down that I never turned on the 6m amplifier. The fan was going, but not the amp or the preamp. Old age and second-day fatigue, I guess. I still managed to work N2NT from three grids away (210 miles / 338 km) on exciter power which is about 15 watts.
After driving home for dinner I wondered whether I should activate my last grid or not. I decided to try it since dinner gave me an energy boost, plus I hadn't been to my east central FN12 site in a few years and wanted to try it again. That was a good move, as this turned out to be my highest QSO count grid activation at 33 QSOs and 7 all-band sweeps. There were opportunities still coming in half an hour before the end of the contest, but now that I work first shift I am tired after 10 PM. I pulled the plug at 10:30 Eastern to save a little energy for tearing down (and potentially fighting off the coyotes I heard while setting up at 7:30 PM). Congratulations to N2NT for being the only station I worked on all 4 of my bands from every grid activation.
The troposcatter propagation was neutral--there was no dx worked from any of my grid activations (nothing over 300 miles). There was no ducting, and no
aurora, although a G3 geomagnetic storm was reached at 0259Z Monday and a coronal hole stream was moving past earth at 700 km/s with a southward pointing Bz
component. Some stations in the Pacific northwest and U.P. Michigan reported strong aurora from this event. There was no Es on 6m as expected, but the wx
was perfect all weekend, including being cold enough Sunday night that there were no mosquitoes or black flies bothering me during teardown in rural eastern
FN12. Unfortunately, for the second year in a row this was the lowest score since 2012.
POINTS SUMMARY
Band QSOs QSO pts. Mults.
------------------------------------------------
50 31 31 11
144 38 38 14
222 31 62 12
432 27 54 13
------------------------------------------------
TOTALS 127 185 50
+5 grids activated
55
--- Claimed score = 10,175 ---