[NLRS] EN37 UHF report

[jcplatt1 at mmm.com]

GM Bill, tnx for the contest report.

Just a quick note for now as I'm back to work (ugh).    I have a number of
regrets from roving this weekend (more to follow on this) and one of them
was not working as many multipliers as I could have .... for example you in
EN37.   I think a part of this, perhaps a BIG part, were conditions.
When I was in Iowa on Sat. the maximum temperature that I saw was 76
degrees, very low humidity and not a cloud in the sky ..... a very nice day
for golf.    The high band conditions back to the Twin Cites were sub par
with almost all contacts above 432 on weak CW .... 2304 was the worst.
The best bands were 222 (sometimes 432) and 10gigs.

>From EN22/32 Saterday evening I had a a short lived "opening" to the EN50
thru EN64 guys.   Early Sunday morning I worked EN74 on 222 from EN15,
otherwise that was about it.   If there were any conditions, they appeared
to be more southern and on east/west paths rather than north/south.

A second part of the issue was my planned route ..... it didnt leave a lot
of time to look around the band and to swing the antennas.    I'm going to
give this some serious thought for next year and Rovermania III ....
perhaps fewer grids & spending more time in each one so as to work more
directions.   How about a Red River Valley Rovermania ?

Lastly, I think we were down a few rovers this year, and those rovers were
more spread out.   We had rovers that covered from eastern NE through IA
into WI and southern MN and that is a lot of geography to cover.    This
year I made very few rover-to-rover contacts when last year I made a number
of them ...... another thing for my post contest analysis.

More on this later with my full report.    Thanks for getting on and
looking for me Bill.

Jon C. Platt
3M Medical Div. QA Manager
270-5N-01
Tel:  651-736-1850
Fax:  651-733-2009