[NLRS] 10G August Weekend

[WB0LJCGary at aol.com]

Hi all,
 
I had a good time running central MN the first weekend with the rover  group. 
 
I want to thank the Sisseton group and the Lonsdale/Vasa groups for  
traveling to the sites and spending the time working the rover group. I also  want to 
thank Bruce, W9FZ, for letting me travel with him and for arranging the  rooms 
for the weekend.
 
Jon, W0ZQ, did a good job with his report on the weekend. I only have a few  
personal thing to add. First, I want to apologize to those in the rover group  
who missed out on some contacts due to the site selection that Bruce and I 
made.  We picked some sites that were less than optimum because we wanted to 
keep  the QSO rate up and not spend another 10 or 20 minutes looking for 
something  better. These sites usually had relatively close trees so the paths to the 
east,  to Lonsdale or Vasa, were not as good as they could have been. We still 
managed  to make the contacts but the trees did cost some of the other rovers 
the  QSO. We tried to make better choices on Sunday.
 
I had a good score, over 53K for the weekend. That is about 5k better than  I 
had two years ago when I operated the first weekend from the Michigan  UP. 
This years total of 284 QSO's is also better. I worked 18 uniques  this year. 
The distances for Saturday were: Lonsdale Church--longest 143  km, shortest 80 
km, and an average of 113.0 km. For Sisseton--longest 248 km,  shortest 179 km 
and an average of 214.9km. On Sunday to the Vasa  site--longest 206 km, 
shortest 149 km and an average of 176.7km. For  Sisseton--longest 224 km, shortest 
188km and an average of 210.4 km. The overall  averages were: for Saturday 
164.0 km, for Sunday 193.5 km and the weekend  average distance of 178.7 km. These 
are not earth shaking distances but the idea  was to make SSB contacts and 
not CW.
 
I am looking forward to the second weekend where ever we operate.
 
73, Gary  WBØLJC