08/07/2008 | W9FZ/R My Best Rovermania Yet!

I've participated in most of the Rovermania's and this was
my best one yet. The previous three years, I've run the
exact same route (EN-43/42/52/53 Dodgeville and
EN-44/54/55/45 Wausau). It's a great route and has good
access to the Twin Cities and Milwaukee/Chicago. But I
needed some new variety. In the past 3 years, I've not
worked KM0T at all on account on being just a bit far away
and he was busy with closer in rover traffic.

I picked an all-eastern-Iowa rove for this year. I started
in the northeast corner on Saturday for EN-33/43/42/32 West Union and in southeast Iowa on Sunday for EN-40/30/31/41 Fairfield. I knew I should have a better chance with KM0T and would have easy shots to K2DRH. I must admit that one of my motivators for trying something new was the CSVHFS Reverse VUCC award.

The biggest reason this year was so good was due to good conditions on Saturday and Saturday night. Activity levels were adequate but the good conditions made it fun.

I drove 1170 miles door to door. That has some $ value and
gas was $270. Admittedly, having to drive to Hillsboro, WI
to pick up my antenna rack adds a few miles.

I ran 222, 432, 903, 1.2, 2.3, and 10G.

Many, many highlights!!!!

1. Murphy stayed away one more time.

2. Good conditions Saturday-I worked from EN-37/26 to
EM29/66. Not all places in between but that's better range than normal. Conditions were back to normal (poor) on the back side of the weather on Sunday.

3. Beautiful weather-not too hot, not too windy. One of the nicer lightning displays I've ever seen while driving in the middle of the night.

4. All the activity! I was called from many directions and
(again) didn't handle it all that well. In some ways,
activity is down in our region. Old stalwart callsigns were missing from this one. But I was quite impressed by NG0R (EN25), K0MHC (EN26), KC9BQA (EN63), and N0TTW (EN32) finding me consistently with many bands. Heck, Thanks to one and two band guys like N9TZL finding me many times as well. Hey I appreciate regulars like K0AWU, W9GA, KB9TLV, N0KP, and N0VZJ too ya know.

5. Every 2.3GHz QSO. 20 Q's in 7 grids. I'm running 6w and
was thrilled to work a nice dispersion of stations: W0ZQ/R, KM0T, K2DRH, K0MHC, and KI9R.

6. Every 10GHz QSO. 10 Q's in 5 grids. KM0T (5), KC0P/R, N0HZO/R, W9ZIH, and WA9O. WA9O had some rainscatter assist across the front on this 280 mile shot from EN30 to EN53.

7. Sweeping with K2DRH from every grid. Bob was patient to
come back later when I was busy. Every sweep went easily
with no fuss. 5 Q's each from 8 grids.

8. Nearly sweeping with KM0T. Mike did a great job of
finding me on longer paths. 6 Q's each from 5 grids, 5 bands from 1 grid, and 2 bands from 1 grid. Conditions really deteriorated in the last hour of the contest. We now know that we were both calling in each others direction and weren't heard on either end.

9. I generally liked the spots I found. I'll share the
lat/lons and some Google maps of the locations I found.

10. The rover activity helped me! Most years I don't work
very many rovers. This time I made 49 Q's with rovers.
That's 17% of my 295 Q's. None of my rover-to-rover
activity was orchestrated/requested/scheduled. I had six Qs
at six miles distance all the rest longer and a 52 mile
average distance (120mi long).

11. Having a middle of the night rover-to-rover eyeball QSO
and Shack-Tour with N9TTX/R in EN-42. It was nice to take a break for a few minutes and talk shop.

12. Although scheduled to knock off at 10pm on Sat night, I kept operating till 1am from EN-32. Conditions were good and I spent time banging away with K0AWU, and K9CVC on 2.3 and 10G where appropriate. I'm glad we tried!

Thanks again to all of you who were on the air!

I'll be QSL'ing some of you. Send me an email
If you need any QSLs.

73
Bruce W9FZ/R -- W9FZ