The January, 2013 VHF contest was a little different for me. I roved in East Texas and Louisiana  as I did last year, but with a tower trailer this time.

Last summer I built the tower trailer at my home in California, then towed it all the way to Cape Cod, Massachusetts in October.  I left it in East Texas for this rove.

What was it like roving with a tower trailer?  Well, setting it up 10 times was a chore, but it was well worth the trouble.  At both ends of the spectrum (six meters and the microwave bands) signals were much better than with a roof-mounted rover setup.  It was amazing how loud K5QE was on the microwave bands.  Altogether, I worked K5QE for 266 QSO points and 61 multipliers.  Having antennas up about 45 feet instead of 10 feet made that a lot easier to do.

Marshall's multioperator group, meanwhile, was running up really impressive multiplier totals on the lower frequencies:  106 grid squares on two meters and 104 on six.  They post totals like that almost every January by making good use of digital EME and MS modes, but it's still
impressive for a station in a low-activity part of the country.

It was a good contest.