ARRL International DX Contest

Excellent day on the HF bands today as the ARRL International DX Contest got under way.  The propagation numbers didn't look too good, but to be honest the issued numbers didn't match the band performance.  There was a good amount of atmospheric noise, but no QSB on any of the bands.

15m which shows as being "poor", was actually the wide open and I managed to work half of Europe on it.  Over all I made 85 contacts...so far...and of them 38 were on 15m.

20m had great propagation into the Caribbean and South America.  I actually worked Bolivia and Peru today...two brand new ones for me out of the 39 countries I put into today's log.

I even managed to work Aruba and Bonaire on 10m this afternoon.  Both stations were pounding into this QTH at about 20 over 9.

The only band that didn't seem to be performing as advertised was 40m.  Both evenings it has not produced any real good DX, and I've managed only 8 QSO's on the band.

We will have to see what tomorrow brings and see how many more countries I can get in the log.