01/23/2008 | KC0IYT/R I roved in central & southern Minnesota for this contest, spending Saturday at the EN23/EN33/EN24/EN34 grid corner, overnight at home in the Twin Cities, and Sunday down to the EN33/EN34/EN43/EN44 corner, then back to the Twin Cities to activate EN35. Morning temperatures when I left home were in the -10F to -15F range with daytime highs near 0F. But the roads were clear of snow drifts and mostly dry!

I left 5ghz & 10ghz at home because it was just too cold to stand outside and use them. It turns out that the stations I usually work on those bands either didn't have them up due to the cold, or weren't on for the contest.

Saturday, conditions improved around sunset when the wind died down. Sunday conditions were up and down all day. 70cm was frequently the strongest band, unlike 2007 when it was sometimes a struggle.

I traveled to several grids that I never worked: EN24, EN23 and EN44. I appreciate the "regulars" who followed me around: W0ZQ, NG0R, and N0VZJ from 6 grids, N0KP and KA0RYT from 5 grids.

I found W9FZ/R in EN43 when I was in EN43 (about 100 miles apart) so I got to work my grid on 6 of 8 bands. An 8-band sweep with K2DRH gave me full sweeps for EN34 and EN41. But, roving isn't entirely about *my* score, I know I helped out a bunch of folks by filling in the spaces between stations. Out here in the mid-west, we don't have 10+ band stations on every grid corner so a rover is more than a portable SOHP station: it's the filling in the middle.

This year I bought a 500khz CW filter for my microwave IF rig, and it enabled me to make some of those weak microwave contacts.

73 and thanks for the QSOs -- KC0IYT