WQ6X Fenagles another 10-meter contest WeeKend

As it turned out, this weekend became another WQ6X ad-HOC 10-meter contest operation. 
Testing the audio configuration on Thursday evening resulted in a PLUME of smoke coming from the Rockville mixing box.  It would seem that the LM-386 I replaced in the left channel of the add-in stereo amp was COOKED into a black block of carbon silicon.  Luckily, I had a better amp board languishing in Alameda that could be quickly brought into service for this weekend's operation.  The Radio Shaft switch box retired from operation last month found new life as a temporary replacement for the Rockville mixer.

For all kinds of reasons out of our control, NX6T access to the WA6TQT Super Station was NoT available this last weekend.  Instead, N6KI put in quite a respectable operation from SDG section running 1.5kw into a modified MONST-IR yagi, while I ran another 10-meter operation from W7AYT's QTH, taking advantage of the 3-el 10-meter Long John yagi that has been languishing atop the 30-ft mast for some years awaiting a sufficient Solar-Flux (SFI) increase to really Gopher-it in December.

The weekend began with a weird JOLT.  Work commitments kept me in Alameda later than expected, finally arriving in Concord @7pm (03:00z 3-hours past the event starting time; if there was an initial band-opening, I missed it.  It took nearly 30 precious minutes to setup an operation under N1MM+.  Being a multi-mode contest event, there were two .MC macro files and a set of .Wav files for Ssb
to be checked out and finalized.  While overall the antenna setup @W7AYT is overall a huge compromise, the Long John yagi JUST happens to be at the optimum (1/2 wavelength) height
for proper 10-meter operation.

During the entire contest weekend the SFI was a dismal 77, altho that was quite an improvement
over last year's SFI of 68-69 ([CLICK HERE] to read about that).  Two weekends prior, the CQ W.W. Cw contest enjoyed an SFI spike to 108, altho of course it DiD NoT remain that high for the entire contest event.  Because the sun rotates every ~27 days, there is (for me anyway) always a hope that last month's SFI will more-or-less repeat itself and become THIS month's SFI; albeit a bit delayed.

For the 2021 10-meter contest, either the previous SFI dropped too fast, or, it was slow to
come back (after having already dropped).  As I write this on Tuesday, the SFI JUST came up
to 80 - by Wednesday as you can see, the SFI JUMPED to 104.  As I am always fond of saying
"maybe next year".  Because the SFI has yet to AVERAGE over 100, the spotty band conditions
were NoT a surprise.

Calling CQ (on Cw) elicited far fewer RBN spots than I would have expected; and yet, during
the periods of time there WERE wide-open openings, the [non-RBN] spots for WQ6X were
rampant - YES!  Based on Soapbox comments from other California stations it is clear that there
was (what I will call) "atmospheric ducting" happening several times throughout the contest weekend.

The best operating periods for me were ironically Saturday evening (03:00z to 07:30z).  I'm used to 10-meter openings until midnight (and beyond) during an SFI of 180+, but NoT with an SFI of only 77.  This further validates my declaratives about the importance of calling CQ.  ([CLICK HERE] to read about this.)  I guess this condition is not all that dissimilar to "Sporadic-E" propagation on 6-meters (altho amazingly, I've never operated on 6-meters before).

I enjoyed the challenge of sweeping the Long John yagi around calling CQ and hearing stations
pop-right-in for a quick exchange, only to fade out just as quickly.  While the Reverse Beacon (RBN) Network may not have spotted me much, DX-Maps certainly showed that WQ6X was being heard; altho as you can see the E. Coasters had incredible propagation by comparison to our modest offerings.  I certainly was expecting more accessible stations (especially DX-related); then again,
this year's 10-meter contest offered up an excellent trial-run of the band for the RTTY RU contest coming up in January.

DiD YOU work the ARRL 10-meter contest?

Is WQ6X in YOUR LoG?