No one does it by accident, or thinking they will not be heard, it's always intentional and malicious.  There, I said it.

I don't think they concentrated on EU. They had no problem or hesitancy answering USA calls during their runs. They had a decent enough signal for conditions, I was closing in on them 10M CW when they went final QRT but needed another couple of minutes, oh well.  HK0NA got alot more NA than EU, thats the way the geography works.

I have picked up this one on 12 and 20 SSB and it looks like a few more slots may be possible. My only previous QSO confirmed to Chad was TT8PK.  According to ClubLog, this is invalid for DXCC, although I do not know the story on that station.  Too bad this solar mess is playing havoc with the bands through this period.

Crude jokes about what they are doing in their off times

I did receive mine

Took me 1 hour to work PY0S in 2005, then 6 1/2 years to get the QSL card, 3-4 mailings.  Had given up and one arrived one day in the mail, kinda shocked me. As far as being on the list, it will not be deleted until a good interval of time has passed. Navassa is the same deal as are several others. I don't see why a few special places and animals can't be protected; is getting a postcard on the wall after many hours cussing over a pileup more important?

There were really alot of Cubanos, and one was running 500 watts.  As to the reason why, I don't really know, but perhaps there is a bit more wealth in the country now, there may be a few more ops with equipment as opposed to having a licence but no rig?  I have always suspected that at least on CW there are alot of old tube rigs or homebrews on the air there, listening to the signals...sounds like the 1950's.

They were quite loud on 10 SSB, 12 CW amd a bit less loud on 17CW today, I had success on the two CW opportunities but not yet on SSB. They did announce for NA only on 17 CW, after which EU stations started QRMing 3C0E's call QRG, it was prety bad.  #314 in the bag!

I also used the FT-5000 in the CQ WW CW at the W2RE station this past fall.  I'm a regular FT-2000 (+ AC0C roofing filter and + IF-2000/SDR-IQ Panadaptor) user with no complaints about my own rig at all.  The FT-5000 worked extremely well for me, the diversity reception feature was useful, the rig is intuitive if you already know the FT-2000.  Because contesters shun the FT-2000, I was the only one using the rig really able to use it to advantage. But get me around a K3, I'm lost, I dont know the rig well enough to feel comfortable with it. That weekend we had 2 Yaesu guys (one a great contester who wins alot with the FT-1000-MP), a K3 guy, an Icom 7800 guy, and the owner of the FT-5000 who was not really familiar with the DSP at all yet.  For any serious pile-up DXer, a radio with a subreceiver and two tuning knobs seems like a "must have" to me.  If I had some more extra $$ now, I'd upgrade to the FT-5000 in a heartbeat, but all my radio $$ are going into towers and antennas right now.

The surprising thing in the text of the article I referred to is that the start of the current cycle is given as back in 2008. Remember that, weeks of no sunspots strung together?  So that would make the peak either in late 2012 or in 2013, then the slow downslide.  I'm not saying we wont see more good 10M openings, we surely will, but geez, I can't get enough of those. I'm putting together a station that will be mostly operational in 2013, and putting more resources into 15-20-40, a little less into 10M.

http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/predict.shtml

We may have seen the best 10 meter openings last fall...RATS!!!!!

Prediction was close, conditions on 15 and 20 were very good to excellent, 10M limited. What we are encountering up here at the W2RE contest station was snowfall with snow static that wiped us off 40 meters fro an hour and a half during prime time Saturday and for 30 minutes Friday, that was the worst. So far on Sunday 10M has been limited up to 10 AM.  It was not great yesterday.

I would make an appropriate response to your thread but I didn't take the time to read it... :

Wow, an opportunity to predict the future!  The big A and K indices were due to the solar filament eruption/flare Saturday that was earth directed, but otherwise sunspots and flux have been in a recent mini "sag".  My own DXing experiences over the past 2 weeks showed me that 12M and 15M bands to be often good, but 10M not a good as when flux was peaking in the Fall, and around the time of the CQ WW.  I predict 15M will be better than 10M but that an effort on 10M will be necessary to have a great score.

I need this one bad, waaaaaah.