We definitely did better this time around, almost doubling our score from last time. Our claimed score for this time is 2268, vs 1144 from September.

6m QSOs: 10
2m QSOs: 36
.7m QSO: 18
TOTAL: 64

We went into this contest excited because we knew that we would do better. Most importantly of all, we had gained some experience from our first time out in September. We also had several improvements to our station including a Mirage amp for 2m SSB, 432 SSB instead of FM only, a 15 element quagi for 432, a copper 1/2 wave loop antenna for 6m, and an elevated location for it.

It seems that adding 432 SSB and operating for 2 shorter days instead of one long one did the most to increase our score. It still seems to me that we should have been able to make more contacts, at least on 2m. It seemed that there wasn't nearly as much activity as there was last September. I remember being able to tune around the band and always hear at least some 2m activity. There were several times this January when we would tune around and hear absolutely nothing. The cold snowy winter conditions here in Michigan during January probably caused less activity, certainly less rover activity.

The biggest dissapointment for me was that our 6m setup didn't work better. We were almost completely deaf on 6m. Even with our 5 watts, often times other stations could hear us fine, but we couldn't hear them. There was a LOT of noise on the band, perhaps we have a local RFI problem on 6m that we need to look into.

I was very pleasently surprised how effective 5 watts was on 432 into a simple quad antenna. It really worked! Of course that is mostly due to the other operator's impressive 432 stations.

I was very excited and curious to try the 15 element quagi antenna that I built for 432. Results are inconclusive, however.

My amplifier doesn't like spicy V8 nearly as much as I do.

Mobile CW is HARD...(don't worry, I wasn't driving)

Jeff's job is to keep us organized while mine is to forget things.

We had an absolutely INCREDIBLE sky from EN73 Saturday night. Truly awesome. One that made you forget the cold. (at least for a moment)

It was nice to meet W8LON, KC8RBR, KF8QL, and K8DOG on the air again.

Here are the grid squares that we activated and contacted. Some of our longer contacts are marked in red. The longest contact was with KB9WZJ, a distance of about 240 miles.

Compare that to our September map:

Even though we had a longer contact this January, we only contacted 11 grids, 3 less then September. We had more power on 2m and I believe a better mobile antenna, but I think that there was much less activity this time.

I definitely want to improve our 6m performance. I don't think that we can change our loop for mobile operations, but I'd really like to get the 6m moxon rectangle up on the mast, so that we can have some height and directivity on 6m when we stop. I'd also like to do some quantitative antenna testing and see how well our antennas are actually performing.

I'd love to add another band, I'm looking at getting on 222 MHz, but that will have to wait. Instead I think that I might build a 6m linear amp.

I really want to make more CW contacts, I heard a fair bit on 2m, but only managed to make one contact with K9EA. Unfortunately, he turned out to be in the same grid square as I was at the time, so no real DX. I think that I heard a lot of aurora, it'd be nice to work some of it.