All scores are claimed scores unless otherwise noted. January: ARRL RTTY Roundup (Final Score) • QSOs: 1104 • Mults: 91 • Score: 99,827 • Op Time: 22:10 hours I lost only 7 QSOs (and zero mults) to log checking, a phenomenal 0.63% error rate. But it was enough to reduce my final score to under 100k. Bummer. A third place finish for W/VE and first place for the ARRL Central Division (including a very nice plaque sponsored by SMC) and first place for Indiana. January: NAQP CW (final score) • QSOs: 859 • Mults: 168 • Score: 144,312 • Op Time: 9.5 hours This is a GOAT for me for this contest, surprising as it comes on a day when my CW copying skills and typing skills were abysmal. Was it just my imagination, or were the CW wpm speeds faster than usual? There were times that I gave up trying to do SO2R because, between the high rates (which I take to mean participation was high, a good thing) and the high wpm, I had to focus all my attention on the run radio. The quiet bands were a nice positive. I found 15 and 20 had very localized prop early in the contest. I could work ME and NH but not VT or MA. Later in the contest, the prop shortened up and I logged an entire new batch of mults on these bands. 25 mults on 15 is unusual for me. I found 50 unique SMC calls in my log including all 4 of my SMC Bobsledding teammates. Managed to run the bands with K9SE. Ran out of gas and could not operate the last 30 minutes. February: WPX RTTY at K9CT • QSOs: 3,802 • Points: 10,204 • Mults: 1,014 • Score: 10,346,856 From the K9CT summary to the SMC reflector: “We had a lot of fun! Great to get the team back together again and share operating, stories and food. Thanks to Tim, Steve, Larry,Steve and Don for driving over and staying in the chair....even at 3am! “Our score surpassed our last two efforts and almost reached our 2017 score. We just need more sunspots to get 15 and 10 going. “The first 24 hours had better propagation conditions for us compared to the last 24. 20m opened very early Saturday followed by 15m a couple hours later. 20m opened after sunrise on Sunday and 15m never really took off. Lots of watery signals with and never very strong from EU on Sunday. NA was fairly good all weekend on all bands. 10m was open in a few directions but not many signals. “We posted to the Contest Online Scoreboard and enjoyed a super competition with WV4P especially later in the contest. It seemed they had better conditions than us and would make great runs and pick up prefixes on us the last 24 hours. Given enough time they would have passed us. As it is, it will be down to log checking. Congrats to their team on a great effort and thanks for the motivation to push our rates and multipliers.” February: ARRL DX CW • QSOs: 44 • Points: 132 • Mults: 38 • Score: 5,016 All S&P, looking for CWops members. February: NAQP RTTY • QSOs: 732 • Mults: 167 • Score: 122,244 When the contest started I thought, "What a slog." I was calling CQ on 20 while S&Ping on 10 and 15: the S&P rate was better for the first two hours and the overall rate was nothing to get excited about. I could see large swaths of 20 where there were just barely traces of signals and I knew there were many stations active that I could not hear. But it's a bit like running a marathon where you just keep putting one foot in front of the other and I stayed in the chair, clicking and clicking. The propagation gods eventually got to work and 20 became full of signals while 10 and 15 stayed open. Then 40 and 80 came into play and the activity was everything you could want, on quiet bands. Early on there was quite a bit of competition for the top spot on the SMC online score between WT9U, N9CK, ND9G and me. Jim eventually pulled away to a comfortable lead while Steve moved into second later in the contest. Watching the back and forth is always a lot of fun. March: Wisconsin QSO Party • CW QSOs: 40 • Mults: 30 • Score: 2,400 Very limited operating time. April: Florida QSO Party • CW QSOs: 21 • Mults: 15 • Score: 1,260 Working CWops members May: Indiana QSO Party • CW QSOs: 590 • SSB QSOs: 34 • Mults: 90 • Score: 109,080 My traditional mobile operation, with XYL Kathleen as my driver. Spent some time on the Warren/Fountain county line which helped my score considerably. Had planned to spend time on the Benton/Tippecanoe line but the church parking lot I had targeted was being used for a neighborhood game of kickball. One of the more exciting moments of the day was when the NMO to ⅜” adapter broke. One minute we are driving along doing great and then, bam, the big noise hits and we are dragging the antennas behind the car. A potentially fatal occurence but fortunately I had a spare on hand. We pulled over, made the repair, and got back on route.