Texas QSO Party
Call: N4CD
Operator(s): N4CD
Station: N4CD
Class: SO CW Mobile LP
QTH:
Operating Time (hrs):
Summary:
Band CW Qs Ph Qs Dig Qs
----------------------------
160:
80:
40: 144
20: 473
15:
10:
6:
2:
UHF:
----------------------------
Total: 617 0 0 Mults = 82 Total Score = 167,782
Club:
Comments:
Chuck, NO5W, tries to get every county on the air â?" arranging for mobiles to
head to 'unclaimed' counties. Chuck is at every hamfest in TX promoting the
TQP trying to get stations interested. If you run with computer logging, he's
also got one of the best 'free' program for state QSO parties â?" GPS enabled.
http://www.no5w.com/
The car was just back from the shop where they had replaced the 'Transmission
Control Module' for the six speed automatic transmission so I would check the
car out on a couple hundred mile trip. It didn't want to stay in sixth gear
and no 'codes' showed up in the car so they didn't know where to start.
Chuck, NO5W, had indicated that no one planned to run Cooke, Archer, and a few
from Haskell going west. So I told him I'd get that. As of Thursday before
the big event, he had commitments from all the mobiles that all 254 counties in
TX would be on the air! Someone else was headed to Stonewall and Kent, too, so
I could skip those if time got run short.
After a nice breakfast, I put the radio in the car, put the antennas on the
car, and headed out. I'd start in Denton County, and you run into Wise,
then whack the corner of Cooke.
When the contest started, I ran on 40M CW.....and things had changed! No S7
spur on 7058. No spur at all. All quiet on 7056.5. Zero car noise! (was S1
on cw - now zero) Replacing the module had eliminated ALL the noise. That
was great. Well, at least I haven't found the spur in the lower 60 Khz of the
band. Didn't look elsewhere. Residual noise is also down to essentially zero
too. Good! That noise has been there since day one in the 2009 Mailbu.
I switched over to 20M CW.......whoa...the dashboard lit up, the gauges went
wild......something there had changed. It was the same setup I used two weeks
ago in the AR QSO Party. Things had gotten a lot more sensitive to RF. NO
problem if stopped, but when moving things went nuts. I ran the first three
counties stopped on 20M. Then I decided maybe I could fix things. So I
moved the coax from the from the driver side door â?" from the mag mount. I
moved it to the passenger side â?" the radio sits on the passenger front seat.
I put a small couple turn coil right by the antenna with the coax (about 4
inches in dia â?" four turns) and brought the coax into the passenger rear
door, and then with a short lead inside to the antenna switch which sits on the
front seat, too. That seems to have fixed the problem. Next I'll have to
figure out a way to ground the radio inside the car â?" never needed it before.
Probably time to take the mag mount base apart and check the coax shield
ground â?" it tends to corrode and not be good. Radio was happy , though with
low SWR. RFI problem appeared to be fixed for the moment.
Oh....I finally got around to putting county lines on my Garvin 200W GPS.
...I went to W4YDY's site. Well, first I went to the store and bought a 'SD
card'. That fits into the side of the Garmin 200W. Then it took me a
while to figure out exactly how to do it. I put the SD card into one of the
slots in my computer that accepts them. My printer also will take an SD card.
Then I looked in 'My Computer' to see which drive I had just plugged in. In my
case, it was the â??Eâ?? drive.
Then I went to W4WDY site.
http://pages.suddenlink.net/w4ydy/hamlinks.html#County
There you will see 'Garmin GARMIN NUVI GPS County lines - Download
Click on that and 'save' the file. Your computer will download it.
Then you get a dialog box. Up near the left hand corner, you will see an
option to 'extract' click on that...and when it asks where to send it, click
on your drive for the SD card. I merely put in E drive. It unzipped the
files to the SD card.
Then I took it out of the computer and put it in the Garmin. Viola! When I
plugged it back in and turned it on - County lines now appear! Thanks Dave
for making it real simple.
Just be sure your Garmin takes an SD card. I'm not sure the newer ones do.
Wow..I checked the price for the Garmin upgrade â?" mine is 4 or 5 years old.
It's $60 bucks for an upgrade- you can often buy a new Garmin for not much more
than that!.....I'll stick with the old one.
The weather was good for county hunting â?" sunny and clear. After Cooke, I
headed west on 174 toward Archer City, but zigged south on 79 down to Young and
Throckmorton. I made a beeline more or less to Haskell, the other county that
no one else was scheduled to go to. I was running a big behind schedule having
had to stop to run on 20M for the first couple of counties until I fixed the RFI
problem.
I didn't have time to go to SSB â?" cw kept me fairly busy. I grabbed a
quick lunch in Archer and kept moving.
Nothing much to report..the band really went 'flat' in the middle part of the
day â?" contacts plummeted and don't think I got spotted in a few since no
county hunters showed up! Either that, or they didn't hear me or vice
versa. They seem to live or die by the spots. I realized I wasn't going to
get to Kent...but the NO5W map showed W5LCC was scheduled to run that one.
At Haskell, I dropped down into Jones and headed east on 180 The temp was
expected to be in the mid 90s.....as I ran through Stephens County, it was 100
degrees in Mineral Wells. Yuk..more hot weather, but it should only last for
few days then back to 90 or so..or lower. The band improved and the DX
showed up â?" OK2EC, PA3ARM, DK2OY, DL8USA, and DL3IAC were in the log. He
sun is not quite as 'hot' either while sitting in the car â?" it's already
fall!
I ran all the counties I ran though â?" there were about 25 TX counties in my
log â?" only worked mobiles a handful of times â?" W3DYA, N5XG N5NA, W5LCC,
N5TM, W0BH â?" but most of the time I suspect they were on 20M (or higher) as
that is where all the action was during th It's hard to be a mobile in state
and get too many counties, but the multipliers worked out well. Not to
worry, I was just out for fun and the check out the car. Just one day out.
Sunday I stayed home and operated from the home station chasing mobiles on 40M.
Either I didn't hear them or they didn't come to 40M in most of the counties
they ran!
As I was close to home, the RTTY started to fill up 40M â?" another RTTY
contest and they infest the band after 5pm or so local time. For a while, you
can slide down to below 7033 and escape the racket...but soon they are
everywhere and by 7pm it's hard to find a 0.01KHz without RTTY to use. I
managed to run Tarrant - on the six and 8 lane roads filled with cars â?" then
hit DALS â?" Long run there â?" then back to the house at 95 deg. Ate dinner
after 30 minutes of putting out the home county - COLN.
Summary; Car worked fine transmission wise. Now up to 70K miles. Mileage
was about 31 mpg poking along on 2 lane roads for most of the trip except the
first 40 and last 40 miles on 6 lane roads (and lots of traffic!) . Lunch
$4.50. Car seems more 'RF sensitive' â?" got to work on that.
Sunday I stayed home and chased the mobiles â?" and put out my home county â?"
Collin a few times.
Rig: Trusty ICOM IC-706 Mark Original (now about 15 years old), six foot mast
on mag mount (grounded) on rear trunk deck with resonators for 40/30/20/17/15
mounted horizontal. Schurr paddles. All hand sending - no computer- and no
driver. 15M doesn't tune well - too many resonators interacting. Didn't run
on 15M.
Score includes bonus points for 16 activated counties. Never heard a mobile
more than a few times so no joy there to get bonus points for working one five
times.
de N4CD, Bob
editor County Hunter News
www.chnewsonline.com
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.hornucopia.com/3830score/
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