10/10/2005 | W0JT Last year, the Northern Lights Radio Society had great success with one team roving the North Shore of Lake Superior, another team at four fixed locations across the lake on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and a couple of small teams around Lake Superior in NW Wisconsin and Wawa, Ontario, for the first weekend of the contest. For the second weekend, one team set up in Sisseton, South Dakota, and the rest roved in various parts of SW Minnesota and the Twin Cities metropolitan area. In my case, the second weekend of 2004 was mostly a bust, because of work committments.

For 2005, we decided to try something different, and forego the Lake Superior expedition. This would be an all-overland attempt. One team spent both weekends at a few fixed sites in Sisseton, SD. Another team roved in SW Minnesota, with an emphasis on making lots of contacts quickly from many locations. To speed up the process and maximize the number of QSO's, we tried to minimize the use of CW and maximize the use of sites where signals were good enough to allow quick SSB contacts. A third team positioned itself at a few fixed locations just South of the Twin Cities metropolitan area that had good views to their West, where the other two teams would be operating. Stirred into the mix were some operators roving the Red River Valley, stations in southern Canada, and a well-known fixed station in NW Iowa.

The first weekend was such an incredible success that we got the lust for big scores. So we decided to really hit it hard on the second weekend, and instead of a change of scenery, we set up for another rover run in SW MN with fixed stations as on weekend one to our West and East. The results will speak for themselves when the scores are posted. Several of our rovers crossed the 100,000 point boundary as well as the 500 QSO mark. I was very happy to come close, with a claimed score of 92,235 points and 500 QSO's (but one was a dupe, so "only" 499 valid QSO's for me).

I lost some Q's due to equipment problems. Amazingly, I only lost a few of them on the first weekend due to my signal being much weaker than expected. This was traced to a maladjustment that had me transmitting 20 mW instead of 2000 mW! Gee, do you think a 20dB penalty makes a difference? More serious equipment problems (at least in terms of lost QSO's) were the less-than-optimal wiring harness of of my rig that occasionally went haywire and prevented my rig from transmitting, and having my rig blow over in the wind at the second-to-last stop of weekend one and landing on the feed horn, breaking off the SMA probe. Amazingly, temporary repairs with duct tape got me back on the air for the last stop. All these problems were ironed out between the two weekends of the contest.

I also lost some QSO's due to operator problems. I got much better at pointing the dish as the days progressed, but being the least experienced of the rovers in our pack still worked against me a bit. There was also one stop where my position as "tail-end Johnny" lost me a bunch of contacts: As we arrived and began to unpack gear, it was lightly misting and I covered my system with a large plastic bag, but didn't take the time to put on my raincoat. By the time it was my turn to make my QSO's, the rain had built up to an unacceptable intensity and I had to call it quits for that stop. Fortunately, the storm passed very quickly, and by our next stop, the rain was gone.

I know how to work on the errors that held my own score down a bit, but as a group, we now have the happy dilemma of trying to figure out how we are going to top our overall results next year! -- W0JT