09/22/2005 | K Wally, WHD and I once again operated together for the 10Ghz Cumulative contest but with two changes from last year. First, we operated from the Red River of the North valley both weekends. Second we were rovers instead of the fixed operations of last year. This valley extends from southern Manatoba all the way to the South Dakota border. It is an old glacial lake bed and offers very good "shots" north-south. The lake bed is about 30miles wide on an average.The entire valley is flat as a table top and selecting a site is pretty easy for the most part, except for "shelter belts" in some areas. Operations included almost 40 locations in the valley along the Minnesota/North Dakota border in EN18,17,16.

The August weekend (photos) weather was very pleasant, but the September weekend was cold and damp on Saturday. Propagation was not very good on the 2nd Saturday at all with the fog, mist and low ceilings.

We both run 18" DSS dishes with modified DSS feeds. The transverters are Downeast Microwave units, WHD's is the 2w version and mine is the lowpower unit with a Qualcom amp running about 800mw. Sorry you can't see the transverters, they are wrapped up to avoid thermal drift in the cool wind.

Operations were in support of VE4MA, other operators in southern Manatoba and NT on Saturday of each week. Then on Sundays I would rove alone working whomever was available, with more effort spent on the NLRS group operating from Sisseton, SD.

The equipment worked well and we had lots of fun. I had 14 unique calls worked, 153 contacts, average distance of 173km and best distance of 292km. Many of the contacts on Saturdays, with the paths being worked were CW. On Sundays once the paths were under 220km to Sisseton, we were able to run SSB. Total fun 27,928pts ... -- Bill K