Call  Station   Op(s)   Category       QSOs    Zones   Countries   Score
------------------------------------------------------------------------
K5YA    K5YA    K5YA    SOAB HP        1838     137     377    2,650,698
K5NA    K5NA    K5NA    SOAB HP A      1340     175     562    2,648,778
AB5K    AB5K    AB5K    SOAB HP A       827     132     368    1,143,000
W5SL    W5SL    W5SL    SOAB HP A        42      26      39        7,865
N5AW    N5AW    N5AW    SOAB LP        1172     154     410    1,818,900
WQ5C    WQ5C    WQ5C    SOAB LP         707     104     278      733,822
AC5AA   AC5AA   AC5AA   SOAB LP A        47      25      40        7,280
KG5U    KG5U    KG5U    SOAB QP         376      78     165      235,710
NA4M    NA4M    NA4M    SOSB HP 80 A     41      15      33        5,088
W5GAI   W5GAI   W5GAI   SOSB LP 10      135      23      50       24,455
W5KFT   W5KFT   many    M/2  HP        2666     167     516    4,813,784

W5KFT ops: K5PI, K5OT, W5ZL, W5TA

"I've been entering this contest for over 20 years, and I have never worked all 40 zones. I came close this year. When I worked 8Q7DV at 0226 UTC Saturday evening (Sunday UTC,) it left me missing only zone 34. I had heard SU9NC briefly Saturday morning on 10 meters, but he disappeared before I could work him. I hoped to find him somewhere Sunday, but I never heard another peep from him or any other zone 34 station. I did manage to work 39 zones on a single band - 20 meters. It's the first time I've done that. My zones total (154) was also the highest I've ever had, but total countries (410) was well below my 485 high water mark from 2002." - N5AW

"I was in and out of the shack intermittently, working around Thanksgiving weekend guests and commitments, so I did not operate much. Mainly, I set out to try a new 160-80-40 meter vertical, and to try to raise my 94 confirmed country count over 100 for 80 meter DXCC. All 14 countries I worked on 80 meters were new for me. I found 80 meters was most productive late Friday evening. I also went searching elsewhere for 'new ones' for me on the other bands as well." - W5SL

"Conditions were much better than I expected -- I'm glad it wasn't just the SSB crowd that had the propagation gods smile on them. :-) We worked 40 meters and 80 meters hard the first night, as the noise was low, and signals were good. We then spent more time on 20 the next night, but never quite got the big EU runs we wanted. It was nice to work a lot of JAs this weekend. We had nice openings to Asia on all bands." - K5PI (@ W5KFT)

"I couldn't sustain a two-radio operation past Saturday morning, even with a spare radio and amp to swap into service. It's too long a story to go into. I expected better JA runs on 40 meters, but I still managed to work 415 Asians (390 Japanese.) 41% of my QSO total was from Asia. I worked a VK4 on 15 meters long path at 0830 local time. I don't rememember ever working any long path on 15 meters in a contest before." - K5YA

"Single band 10 meters was a bad choice. It seems like many contesters avoided 10 meters. Propagation was very poor. I ran 100 watts on Saturday, but only 5 watts on Sunday (for fun). It didn't seem to make any difference; I worked nearly every station I heard. I worked only one country in Asia - JA. I heard an RZ0 a couple of times, but he was S&P, too. The only long-time pipeline seemed to be to CX and ZL, and JA in the late afternoon." - W5GAI

"This used to be my favorite contest, but now it seems I'm either gone for the Thanksgiving Day weekend, or other projects are consuming my operating time. At least I got on long enough to find out my antennas are not working as they used to for me. It looks like they need some work. There was lots of activity in the last hour! I must plan on spending the whole weekend on the contest again one of these years - hi!" - AC5AA

"I could certainly tell the existence of the PacketCluster bottom feeders. In at least four or five instances, I was calling, with one or two others, a DX station when suddenly there were ten or twenty of us calling. Also, I noticed in the pileups where the DX was not giving his call but once every four or five minutes (it seemed like,) and no one was asking for the call. I'm figuring they were PacketCluster users. Interesting phenomenon." - KG5U

"My goal was to see how many multiplierss I could get and if I could stay in the operating chair for the full 48 hours again. I was in the chair for at least 47 hours, because I only left for bathroom breaks and a shower on Saturday. I listed 45 hours as my operating time because I did take a two hour nap in the operating chair with my headphones on and with the volume turned up. The turned-up volume acts as my alarm clock. Actually, my rate sheet shows only one hour of the 48 without a QSO, and that was while I was napping in the chair." - K5NA