Another (less expensive) possibility would be to activate rare states (and counties) for European DX. We're making almost as much noise over there, I think, than here stateside. I have corresponded with a Croatian operator and, in the process, gotten him (and his contesting friends) at least interested in looking. We'll see if anything comes of that.
I have an Uncle in Rapid City, SD, and some very distant (but potentially revivable) connections in Miner County and Brookings in South Dakota as well. Going mobile from here is about a four or five hour trip to the eastern part and about eight to the Black Hills.
This might allow more overall participation as we could have groups doing what Frank suggested (NA IOTA, VHF or HF) as well as activating a lot of the rarer states and/or counties. Two fairly rare Minnesota counties are about a hour's drive for me and W0VB already nearly has a mobile setup ready to go.
There's lots to think about, but the glamour of the DXpedition is worth some thought, especially if we can get it in an environment where we can send out a suitable QSL card to the masses. I agree the radio would be easy to use in "run mode" but (in terms of my interest -- showing off the rig), I think we'd want to show it worked in "pounce" mode also. That's where the logging comes in tougher.
On the other hand, if it was me going, I could probably set it up custom with the SDR-bound Windows stations going remote to a MySQL-based Linux box to hold the log records (and keep track of things like proper serial numbers if we have more than one radio on the band). I wouldn't use MySQL to run a business, but it is plenty good enough to do a contest, especially as I could build in a running backup. We could do that for a straight-up DXpedition as well.
My favorite fantasy about the logging would be to have an ultimate paper backup that printed out on. . .QSL card labels.
"No wasted motion." WO0Z
