Finished Salmon Run 2023

I'm in line at the Kingston Ferry, the route reduced to one boat, instead of the usual two. I'm leaving the west side where I spent the weekend operating with Rusty, W6OAT during Salmon Run 2023.  I thought I'd drop a quick note before the Ferry starts to load.

Far and away the best experience contesting this year.

It had been on my calendar since 7-QP and with all of the MST contesting as well as other state QP's the copy-practice paid off.

I cannot comment directly on the score -- I don't know precise numbers.  But we did as good as we hoped we would.   Some highlights:

• We got to work K7TQ (Randy and Mike N7WA) on each of the counties they travelled -- many times on multiple bands.  Fantastic!
• A lot of the WWDXC members were in the log too.  N7SS -- we worked Dan I believe on all the bands 160-6.  "7-Band-Dan"  And for a lot of other members, we worked them on several bands during the contest. K5EM, WA6CPA, and a whole long list.
• The DX was great. 9N7AA was a good contact, and I believe we made contacts across all the continents except for Antarctica.
• The SAC provided a lot of good DX.
• Rusty and I chuckled at the spot-networks -- the Canadian provinces we really needed were skimming our signal routinely.  But no VE6's or MT's to be found!  Still we did reach into a VE2 late in the contest and that was great.
• About mid-way through the contest we re-mapped some of the Macro-keys to ask "QSY up?" essentially trying to get some contacts on 6m and 160m.   It was fun when we'd get a bit of tracking on that.
• Our friend NN7SS also gave us some Q's -- and that was fun since the last time I heard NN7SS was when I was operating it for RSGB IOTA in July.  Mark, K6UFO -- thanks for the QSOs!

It was a lot of fun and I appreciate all the hard work that went to prepare the contest.  I'm especially thankful to Randy and Mike for taking a ride through eastern Washington for two days+ to give us those Q's.   Thanks guys!

My thanks to Rusty and all the help and guidance.  We had a great time.

There's probably more that I could say and I'll leave room for that when the score gets posted.   Thanks again for the QSO's and QRS to my speed.  

Another big contest is just around the corner:  The California QSO Party.    https://www.cqp.org/Rules.html

Until next time..  73 and GD DX.