During the contest I drove to 2 rover sites I've been looking at "on paper" but neither one worked out. One of them was a 2700 foot hilltop with a road to the top, but when I got there I found a gate blocking access to the top. As a result, a lot of contesting time was wasted and consequently I had to cancel a couple gridsquare activations, including one of my favorites--FN23. I ended up operating from two nearby grids--FN22 (our home grid) and FN12. As it turns out, I eventually used 3 different spots in FN22 during the contest.

I was pleased to see the 6m loop exhibit a workable SWR at such low heights. The loop was never higher than about 14 feet above ground, and without the tuner, the SWR was 1.8 to 1. The 4-el yagi performed flawlessly and was a huge improvement over the loop, but it was nice having the 2m loop operational while mobile. The antennas were supported by stackable tent poles, and my setup time was 4 minutes. That was a good thing in the zero degree weather Saturday night, although the mast was still mounted through the passenger's side rear window, which means I had to keep it open while operating at a rover site. But at least I could easily reach back and grab it to spin the 2m beam.

I was lucky to catch the 6m E skip band opening--it was perhaps the biggest news of the contest. Having the 6m loop was great because I was able to work stations in 3 directions very quickly--the EN & EM fields and VE1 land. I never expected E skip in January, but I was sure glad to be prepared for it. I even gave out a new grid for someone's VUCC efforts.





POINTS SUMMARY

Band   QSOs    QSO pts.    Mults.
--------------------------------------------
50      40        40        22 
144     28        28        11 
--------------------------------------------
TOTALS  68        68        33
                            +2 grids visited
                            --
                            35


       --- Claimed score = 2,380 ---