Lester, obviously there's no such thing as a guarantee when it comes to seeing auroras in a given period. Two weeks is a good timeframe to give yourself a decent chance. As far as locations, anywhere along that famous oval (which I'm sure you've come across already)
http://www.gi.alaska.edu/AuroraForec...lar/2012/08/01
Which makes Northern Alaska, Northern Norway/Finland, Iceland and Southern Greenland the spots to go to. Everything else is really a personal preference I guess. Fairbanks and Tromsų tout themsleves as "norther light capitals". Fairbanks would be easier and cheaper to get to from Australia I suppose, but personally I'd go to Tromsų (much warmer, again, coastal climate and Gulfstream etc). Iceland is a pain (and expensive) to get to (only Greenland or Northern Russia would be worse in that regard).
2013 is supposedly the solar max, so there won't be too many days without activity, so it all comes down to a bit of luck with the weather.
Any particular reason you want to go in February? Not sure what the scientific answers are behind it, but the weeks around an equinox appear to have the highest activity (at least most of the photos/reports i found on the net are during that period ... but maybe that just means in mid-winter it's too cold for most people to go out
which I can understand!). Anyway, there can be a big difference between the weather in February and the end of March. Also, I planned my trip around a new moon, since in those latitudes even quarter moons will be up pretty much all night).
As for driving in winter, a lot of it is just common sense. Don't go out if a blizzard is on/forecast and stay away from mountain roads to start with (most will be closed if there's snow anyway). Cars will be equipped with winter tires to make it easier. If you can affort to, rent a small 4WD/SUV. I didn't feel the need to join a tour in Iceland (as a matter of fact, most tours in Iceland stay around Reykjavik, and would have seen nothing during my 2 weeks!). Having said that, I know the country quite well now (and learned to drive on Austrian mountain roads
).
A typical day for us would be to get up late, check the latest forecast (which for Iceland are broken down into 3-hourly intervals, and are quite accurate within 24-36 hours) and road conditions. IMO/road authority have pages in English too:
http://en.vedur.is/weather/forecasts/areas/
http://www.vegagerdin.is/english/roa...s-and-weather/
We only booked hotels for 1-2 days at a time to be flexible, which was easy to do in Iceland, since it's off season. So depending on the weather forecast we either stayed or drove on. Come evening, again checked the weather forecast as well as the current space weather reports. By about 10pm I'd go outside and take a few handheld shots of the sky with my DSLR (5 sec/ISO3600 or higher). If there was any green stuff amongst the cloud we'd get in the car and head out of whatever town/village we were in. Often I would have picked an area/spot during the day that would give good visibility and some interesting foreground for my photos. Then a bit of patience ... as activity would start quite suddenly. In our case it often peaked around midnight. And I tell you, it still sends shivers down my spine just thinking about it!!!!!
