Started out pretty good Saturday with a lot of local stations to work, but it slowed way down after the first hour.  Except for an all too brief Es opening to FL it stayed slow for the rest of the day and most of Sunday.  On Sunday I was lucky to work one station from FL on a fast Es bubble while calling CQ into an otherwise dead band. Activity picked up a little at the very end Sunday night as did some all too brief tropo enhancements, but was still way lower than in past years. While not as awful as the 2012 UHF contest was here, it was still pretty bad.  

So this was just another slow contest grind with many 10 or less QSO hours. Seems like there’s been too many of those lately and that propagation as well as participation has really fallen off a cliff.  The only Es opening had a limited footprint and no real depth.  The cold front ensured that tropo was almost non existent, similar to a January contest, but I’ve worked way more QSO’s in January before. The Midwest rovers stayed home in droves despite wonderful weather. The few rovers that were about went too far away (over 300 miles) for me to find and work often. The one that I could track WA0VPJ/R was very busy every time he changed grids since there was otherwise slim pickings.  The stalwart multiband rovers with big antenna racks were all among the missing. None of the rovers I worked had anything above 432 (yay limited rover). Neither did the one or two multis within a few hundred miles (yay limited multi). No matter, the bands above 432 were generally uncooperative anyway and the noise level on 902/3 from the “other occupants” is getting so bad that what used to be easy distances are now rendered almost impossible.  

73 de Bob2