Kansas QSO Party
Call: K0S
Operator(s): W0BH
Station: K0S
Class: Mobile SO Mixed LP
QTH: 32 Kansas counties
Operating Time (hrs): 16.3
Summary:
Band CW Qs Ph Qs Dig Qs
----------------------------
80:
40: 80 13
20: 872 1052
15:
10:
6:
2:
----------------------------
Total: 952 1065 0 Mults = 54 Total Score = 269,244
Club:
Comments:
The 2012 Kansas QSO Party by W0BH Operating K0S/m
After last year's Sesquicentennial QSO Party success with 1x1 calls, we had a
number of requests from both sides of the Kansas border to do it again. The
spelling of KANSAS and SUNFLOWER to earn a stamp and a certificate seemed to be
a big hit. This year, we added two additional antique radio stamps to the mix :
the 1965 Int'l Telecommunications Union stamp and the 1940 Samuel F.B. Morse
stamp to go along with the 1964 Amateur Radio stamp from last year.
Lorna/k0why and I headed west to 32 counties on the same route as last year,
minus two counties already well-covered by other mobiles. Because the forecast
was for cooler temperatures, we were able to take the Chevy Astro with no A/C.
The Astro has a great roof for mag mounts and Hustler antennas, and is my RF
vehicle of choice for QSO parties. The only new piece of equipment was an N8XJK
power booster which performed flawlessly and kept the radio at full output with
the engine on or off. If you're interested, you can read about my equipment
setup in last year's KSQP 3830 post where I went into lots more detail.
Saturday
My home QTH is only 3 miles from a three-county line, so I headed there for the
9:00 am start. It had rained an inch the night before (you don't know how much I
enjoy writing that :-), but things had been so dry that the roads were fine.
Right on schedule, I CQd on 7038. WB0TEV came back followed by N6MU .. and we
were off. Both 40m and 20m CW were really loud, so I ran off a bunch of
contacts on both bands before switching to 40SSB where I found a high SWR
waiting for me. I tried the tuner with no luck. I normally don't run the tuner
at all since the Hustlers are all tuned for my operating frequencies.
Everything had checked out perfectly the night before, so what happened? I
couldn't make it work, so I replaced my 80m CW coil on a different mag mount
with another 40m SSB coil. It worked with a tuner, but it was too close to the
40CW coil to work properly. To make that long story short, the entire day was
basically a bust on 40m even though I tried from each county. It seemed like
those that did hearme were having trouble. Many apologies to those who needed
me on 40m. Another coil is on order.
While I was at the line, Lorna stayed at home because it gave her an extra 45
minutes to pack the cooler and finish getting ready to go. I headed home to
pick up Lorna and my forgotten coffee mug, then we headed west into the cool
morning air. Along the way, we ran into rain showers, but cloudy, cool weather
sure beats typical August in Kansas, so no complaints. The day actually went
really smoothly after that. Fortunately, 20m had a never-ending supply of
contacts, and band conditions stayed loud the entire day. I tried 15m from
time to time, but no takers when I CQd, and no luck whenever someone wanted me
to try there. I was able to work a number of Kansas stations on 40m including
four mobiles, but again, they couldn't seem to hear me very well even though
many of them were booming in.
The most non-radio excitement on Saturday came when I started swatting thistle
seeds blowing through the window on their fluffy white "parachutes." I thought
they were mosqitoes at first because I was concentrating on the computer!
Needless to say, Lorna got a good chuckle out of that. She kept us on schedule
the entire day, but that occasionally meant some fast driving on some muddy
roads. It was never dangerous, but when I got out of the van to stretch, the
right side was plastered with mud and I got really dirty trying to get back in.
At a gas stop later in the day, I used the windshield scraper to clean my door
handles! We got to the KS/CO in northwest Kansas with 9 minutes to spare, so
Lorna stopped and let me work out the final minutes before we headed 10 miles
into Colorado for our overnight stop at Lorna's cousin's house in Burlington,
CO. We had 1382 Qs in the log.
Sunday
Sunday morning was cool and clear as I went out to the van to fire up the
equipment. When I plugged in the accessory power for the voice keyer (rarely
used), CW keyer, band decoder and logging computer, I didn't hear the familiar
--- -.- in morse code sent by the K3 keyer. I plugged and unplugged it
several times with no luck. My K5 keyer is occasionally a bit voltage
sensitive, but never my K3 keyer. This time I couldn't get it to come up, so I
pulled out my box of spare stuff and substituted the K5 keyer. It worked.
Because of that, we got off a little late, but luckily it wasn't far to the
border and the first Q on Sunday morning came in only a few minutes late.
A little further down the road, John/n6mu reported my SSB audio breaking up
when I used the foot switch. It was fine with the Heil headset switch or the
hand mike, so I figured the skinny wire MFJ uses on their foot switch must have
broken from me stepping on it all the time. I had just purchased another Heil
foot switch with a nice thick cable as a backup, so I dug into my spares box
once again and the problem went away. You can never have too much spare stuff
along on a mobile QSO party run!
John/n6mu also reported getting close to another 105 county Sweep. It was fun
to follow his progress and of course give him new counties along the way. We
all celebrated when he did it with about 30 minutes to go. Congratulations
once again, John! That's two years in a row.
We finished the run back in our home county, less than 30 minutes away from
Connie/k5cm and Pam/n5kw operating N0U/m, who finished their run at the
three-county line close to our farm. We had a great meal and very much enjoyed
our visit with them before they headed for home on Monday.
Stats
We operated 16.3 hours, 2084 combined Qs, 539 unique calls, 9 dupes. Lorna
ended up with 67 contacts in her log.
States not worked ----- : VT AK CO SD
Canadian not worked --- : SK NB NU YT PE NL (worked NS QC ON MB AB BC NT:-)
KS worked (14 counties) : WAY THO JOH MSH DIC ELS REN MCP DOU SED MIT JAC WAB
SHE
DX worked (7 countries) : DL F G OE UT XE YV
Six-hour Rates (W0BH only) - 124/hr average
------------------- 2012--2011--2010--2009
Saturday 1400-1959 - 114 - 129 -- 86 - 145 Qs/hr
Saturday 2000-0159 - 124 -- 86 -- 67 - 114 Qs/hr
Sunday 1400-1959 - 134 - 106 - 123 - 164 Qs/hr
County Breakdown (in visited order)
Saturday (465 miles)
01 MCP 36 McPherson
02 MRN 28 Marion
03 HVY 40 Harvey
04 REN 71 Reno
05 RIC 52 Rice
06 STA 40 Stafford
07 BRT 74 Barton
08 RUS 64 Rush
09 PAW 95 Pawnee
10 EDW 35 Edwards
11 FOR 77 Ford
12 HOG 56 Hodgeman
13 NES 58 Ness
14 LAN 44 Land
15 SCO 111 Scott
16 FIN 82 Finney
17 KEA 71 Kearny
18 WIC 97 Wichita
19 HAM 60 Hamilton
20 GLY 89 Greeley
21 WAL 57 Wallace
22 SMN 37 Sherman
Sunday (334 miles)
22 SMN 31 Sherman (again)
23 THO 50 Thomas
24 LOG 80 Logan
25 GOV 91 Gove
26 SHE 35 Sheridan
27 TRE 69 Trego
28 ELL 63 Ellis
29 RSL 78 Russell
30 ELS 60 Elsworth
31 LCN 38 Lincoln
32 SAL 40 Saline
01 MCP 07 McPherson (again)
Special thanks to the following ops for 10 or (way) more contacts:
67: N6MU - another Kansas Sweep !
56: W4UT
49: N5DO - consistently loudest signal into Kansas
39: NT2A
34: NN4K VE7CV
33: WA6KHK
29: AC5O
28: KS4X
27: W4UCZ
26: K5WAF
22: K4AMC
21: N4UF WA2VYA
20: N8II
19: ND3R
18: NS5J VE6BMX YV5OIE
17: VE1WT W7OXB WA8REI
16: N4CD/M N4NX VA3XOV VE3KZ
15: KN4Y WB8FSV
14: N4PN W0PAN WA5TRX
13: K1TKL NT5O OE5KE W2RR W7KQZ
12: DL3GA K4BAI N3KN W7OM
10: AC0BH K4YT KT4SS N2YBB N3KR VA3GKO W6KC
1x1 stations worked (12) : K0K N0N W0S N0S W0U K0U N0L W0O N0W K0E N0R K0R
Kansas mobiles worked (4): W0O/m K0E/m N0R/m NU0Q/m
Other Kansas worked (4) : KS0KS (Bonus station) KC0DEB KC0TYG WD0EUF
W0BH Award Winners - First Place ----- Very Honorable Mention
--------------------------------------------------------------
Most overall Qs ---- N6MU/67 ----- W4UT/56 ------ N5DO/49
Most CW Qs --------- N6MU/35 ----- W4UT/NT2A/28 - W4UCZ/27
Most PH Qs --------- N6MU/32 ----- AC5O/29 ------ W4UT/28
Most counties ------ N6MU/32 ----- W4UT/30 ------ NT2A/AC5O/29
Afterwards
We have lots of people to thank for another successful KSQP. First, I'd like
to thank Randy/n0ld who left his mark on the KSQP the past three years with his
unique organizational talent. Randy's job moved him to St. Louis, but he got on
the phone Saturday evening from St. Louis and rallied the troops when we needed
more presence from one of our bonus stations. Thunderstorms on Saturday kept a
number of ops off the air, but K0A was easy to find on Sunday!
Mike/k0py lost his father, a WWII vet, on August 11. He had planned a mobile
operation and cancelled that, but decided to operate from home anyway in memory
of his dad. Condolences and thanks from all of us, Mike. Your W0W call in our
logs is now even more special.
Rob/k0ru was recovering from major surgery a week ago, but he still wanted to
make some noise as N0A. A combination of equipment failure and a broken hot
water heater caused N0A to be missing from the airwaves. He tried all weekend
to fix both, but this year his only radio memories are of the terrific job he
did for us last year. Rob is recoving and says he is already looking forward
to 2013. Thanks for trying! We're putting procedures in place for next year in
case something like this happens again.
All our 33 1x1 call operators including a number of multi-op stations deserve a
big thank you for lighting up the airways all weekend. They were joined by a
number of other Kansas stations and our two bonus stations : the BEARS
operating K0A and the Sante Fe Trail ARC operating KS0KS. We had four
out-of-state mobiles active : N0U from OK, N0R from TX, W0O from MN, and NU0Q
from IA. Thanks Connie/k5cm and Pam/n5kw, Chuck/no5w and Alan/n5na, Jon/w0zq,
and Bill/nu0q for visiting our state. Thanks to all the mobiles for burning up
gas on the highways and dirt roads, and the fixed stations for putting all 105
Kansas counties on the air. Led by John/n6mu who once again reported a County
Sweep, I know we were appreciated beyond the Kansas borders. New this year was
our customized spotting network link which allowed a number of you to find that
last letter needed to spell KANSAS or SUNFLOWER and grab a stamp for your
certificate. Thanks to Richard/k0rcj for his work on the spotting network, and
thanks to Bruce for his help with the stamps.
This year, our sponsors came through once again to provide the funding for our
operations. A number of our plaques are individually sponsored this year as
well. If you earned a plaque, be sure to thank your plaque sponsor. And thank
all of our sponsors if you get the chance! The BEARS, with Harvey/w0hgj and
Jeff/ac0tc deserve thanks for keeping the finances in order this year. And
finally, Kent/kb0rwi, did his usual terrific job of making our web site
informative and useful. Thanks, Kent!
As before, the best part of this was getting to meet or exchange emails with
many of you as we all tried to make this work. With your help, we did. Keep in
touch. Any new ideas or suggestions for the 2013 Kansas QSO Party are most
appreciated ... !
73, Bob/w0bh/k0s with Lorna/k0why
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.hornucopia.com/3830score/
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