Another interesting contest in the books! Although (of course!) not comparable to results of past years during sunspot maximum it was way more fun than last year. 😎
Due to other commitments I had a late start on Saturday, first QSO was at 11z. The band was open to UR & UA3 via Sporadic-E but activity was low. RT9S, UA9BA, P3X & 4Z5LY were worked as the only “DX” during the first few hours. DX isn’t a real advantage (besides higher QSO totals, of course) as in ARRL-10 all QSOs are worth the same points. The band continued to open every now and then to the east with a swing over to YO & LZ in the afternoon. Starting around 16z there was an in&out ES opening into Spain also linking into (probably) TEP to South America providing a small bunch of new multipliers. But even there activity was quite low. While I could still work loud EAs and Fs on e-skip there were no South Americans anymore after 17:30z. Last QSO Saturday was at 18:32z into France, finished the day with 162 contacts in the log, already much much better than last year.
Sunday morning (first QSO at 7:55z) seemd like a repeat from the previous day: Band was open to UR, UA6, EW, then adding the Balkans to the mix an hour later. Another short opening to the northeast added some more mults from the Baltic region to the log. After 12z the band was closed completely, only worked a few locals. At 14:44z I found V51YJ CQing as the only signal on the band – nice catch. 😎 After 3 hours of noise it seemed that a number of competitors had already given up. So I could gain more points when the band suddenly opened quite strongly into South America after 15:30z again, this time with really loud signals! Very strong EAs & Fs at the same time lead to the conclusion of another ES+TEP link. The Sporadic-E got so strong later on I could work shorter distances within Europe (i.e. ON, PA) and even made a few QSOs within Germany via ES (about 500 km to western and southern Germany), nice! 😎 The band was also open to the UK and I had hope to maybe work a few Caribbean mults but it did not happen, no double/triple hop ES westwards. But the e-skip was so strong I could work quite a number of European stations on ES-backscatter providing more welcome mults. 🙂 Unfortunately I had to QRT at 19z. There were still a few (now much weaker) South Americans to be heard but the band had already dried down a lot so hopefully I didn’t miss too much afterwards.
Judging from the 3830 reports it seems that we were quite lucky in Europe this year with all these Sporadic-E openings (although there could have been much more activity). The USA only had a good ES opening at the start of the contest and then nothing anymore for the whole weekend, that’s probably very frustrating. Unfortunately it will not be #1 in Germany for me this time. Good friend Oliver, DL2ARD, who is an avid SSB contester, decided to do Mixed this year, too (and I recognized that too late else I could have started in another category 
). He had to QRT Sunday afternoon already due to heavy snow storms on his hill-top QTH and missed the South America opening but it was not enough for me to catch up. Less aluminium, less power and a much worse QTH overhere … good to have excuses! 😀
ARRL 10-Meter Contest Call: DH8BQA Class: SO Mixed Unlimited HP QTH: JO73ce Operating Time (hrs): 16:30 Summary: Band QSOs Mults ------------------- CW: 257 45 SSB: 86 26 ------------------- Total: 343 71 Total Score = 85,200 Comments: Elecraft K3, KPA500 + 6 ele OWA Yagi @ 60 ft.