[NLRS] W0JT/r results for August 2009 RoverMania

[tosca005 at umn.edu]

I had to work part of Saturday, and I was not feeling well enough to 
assemble the full rover station on Sunday. It took longer than expected to 
repair my busted 10 GHz feedhorn (a casualty of the last contest when my 
system fell on its face in the wind), so I barely got out of the driveway 
by noon on Sunday, after making one QSO from my driveway in EN34js. I 
headed for EN35, where I planned to set up 5.7 and 10 GHz, along with 222 
and 446 FM. It took me way longer than I expected to get to EN35, and then 
I could not find a spot near the 34/35 border with any kind of reasonable 
horizon to the South (or to any direction, for that matter). Just trees and 
tall buildings on every side of me! A few minutes before the end of the 
contest, I pulled into a tiny parking lot and made 2 more QSO's on 223.5 FM 
and one on 446.0 FM, and it was all over. :(

Band   QSO's   Grids   QSO Pts
222      3       1        9
432      1       1        3
Totals   4       2        12

Grids activated = 2, plus band-grids worked = 2, so total grids = 4
Total score, W0JT/r = 4 x 12 = 48.  Well, it's better than zero!

Questions:
1) I think that some of the locals have found a spot in EN35ja or near 
there,
   right on the EN34/EN35 border, with reasonable 10 GHz views to the Twin
   Cities or to Buck Hill. Can anyone tell me where that might be?

2) I'm having problems making an electronic log. (Can you believe that?)
   I can no longer run my old standby program, VHF-DX, because it refuses
   to run on 64-bit Vista, and I haven't resurected my 32-bit XP partition
   yet. So I tried RoverLog, but it didn't seem to recognize the Limited
   Rover category, and the Cabrillo header did not get filled in correctly.
   I also tried using a web-based log submission program that is mentioned
   on the Spring Sprints page, but the last step supposedly emails the log
   to me for verification before sending it in to the ARRL, and I never got
   a copy in my email.  If all else fails, I can surely send it in on paper,
   since it's only 4 QSO's for cryin' out loud, but it's the principle of
   the thing now, plus the need for the future when I might have a REAL
   log to submit as a rover...  Comments, anyone?

Hopefully, my 3 QSO's with W0AUS earned them a lot more points than they 
earned me (hopefully, they have LOTS more multipliers to go with them!) And 
see, with that fourth QSO, I was *NOT* a "captive rover" :)

73 de W0JT/r