Conditions were very poor from the outset with the K index at 6. Worked some African stations on 10m in the first few hours, but later 10m was dead. Looking at Ionosondes, the MUF didn’t even get above 21MHz until early evening, and then I found VEs were largely absent. So I spent more time on 20m than usual. VEs on 20m were sounding auroral even early afternoon. Based on the poor conditions, I decided to only do 12 hours to avoid dead horses and flogging. I did the first 12 hours and didn’t save time and get up before sunrise – probably not the best tactically. I did the same last year, but this year QSOs were down 23% because of the poor conditions.

 BAND QSO DUP BONUS HQ POINTS  AVG
———————————-
   80   2   0     0  2     10  5.0
   40  42   1    28  8    385  9.2
   20 110   1    54 13   1065  9.7
   15  39   0    30  5    355  9.1
   10   9   0     9  0     90 10.0
———————————-
TOTAL 202   2   121 28   1905  9.4
==================================
        FINAL SCORE: 4 885

Best regards,
David M0DHO