Hi Ken,
Glad you are interested and yes 30m is a great band for digital activity...between 20m and 40m so the best of both for propagation and open some where 24x7..less noise than 40m...less antenna space than 40m...no contests like on 20 and 40 so yes, 30m for USA is one of our only low power, digital only no contest bands and we feel should be used and we have been promoting the 30m band for increased activity since so many ops seem to skip over 30m when going from 20m to 40m..give 30m a try!
Your antenna idea might work well you never know unless you try so use what you have. I have talked to 30m ops using mag loops, low to the ground dipoles, small attic loops, alpha delta verticals, buddy poles, and mobile hustlers on gutters or even just the loading up the rain gutters alone (my 40ft rain gutter has made many a contact on 30m along with my attic wires even at qrp levels...then again switching to the antennas outside or on the tower make a big difference but yes use what you have and give it a try!).
Actually if you would go to the links in the first post and to the 30 Meter Digital SPOT pages you will see that the band is active with PSK signals from local ragchews to DX (we have 'auto' spotters that are rx only setup to spot 30m psk activity...our auto spotters are in NA-West Coast and Central..two auto spotters in EU..and one auto spotter in OC-VK). It seems you folks on the east coast have an easier time getting into EU at the moment and EU has been open to most of NA on 30m from around 1900z to 2300z and you also should do fb with the digital ops on 30m from SA that are on and strong from 2200z to 0200z...if you can stick around in the wee hours OC the VK/ZL have propagation to NA on 30m from around 0500 to 0800 as of late.
Most the activity will be using the most popular mode at the moment which is PSK so 90% will be participating on 10.140 dial +/-1000 (some will use other digital modes too so have them at the ready but of course use common sense when using wider modes if the band is busy or know what other operations are around..always give way to com'l/gov signals on 30m as we are secondary users). Hope to see you on the band and although 070 will have a great time on 20m with the contest for those that like to contest this again is not a contest but an event on 30m to promote the awareness of this great band we have, encourage use of the band and experimentation...and having a good time meeting other ops with like interests. WARC bands contests are not allowed nor would we support such on 30m...relaxed low power operation)
See you on the band.
de kb9umt Don
http://www.30meterdigital.org 
