Oklahoma QSO Party
Call: AD0DX
Operator(s): AD0DX K1BBR
Station: AD0DX
Class: Mobile Assisted LP
QTH: OK
Operating Time (hrs): 18
Summary:
Band CW-Dig Qs Ph Qs
------------------------
160:
80:
40:
20:
15:
10:
6:
------------------------
Total: 379 2 Mults = 57 Total Score = 60,000
Club:
Comments:
OKQP 2013
Ron AD0DX (and Bob K1BBR)
Bob and I worked the KS qso party last Aug and made 700 q's. I was really
hoping to break the 1000 qso barrier. But it was not to be.
I took time Friday afternoon to get set up for the qso party, after spending a
number of hours planning our route. I had a really nice route with
20+ counties so I was excited for the OKQP. I was going to use CQX for the
first time, but since I was also using the Delorme street maps
software with gps for navigating, I decided to stick with N1MM for logging and
rig control becuase I am familiar with N1MM. I updated N1MM
and reread the OKQP contest rules and found that now DXCC countries were to be
counted as multipliers for OK stations. Great!
I also made a quick trip to the local ham radio store to get a cable to control
Bob's FT-857 from the computer. I had everything working on
kitchen table on Friday afternoon; FT-857 hooked up to a 17AH battery, DeLorme
software with GPS and usb Connection to the WinKeyer. I was
sending cw to a dummy load but I never actually turned the gps on... sure
enough we get everthing installed in the truck, and I turn the
gps on and the mapping software locks up as long as the rig control usb cable
is active. I decided that the mapping software with the route was more
important
than the rig control so I had to enter our freq and mode changes into N1MM
manually. I did make a few freq errors during the contest
(I changed bands on the radio and forgot to update N1MM) but I think I caught
them all during the contest.
I created the OKQP contest file and entered a qso with DL8USA but the station
was logged as DX only in N1MM. Rats. I posted a question on the
N1MM Yahoo! group and John K3CT answered that he would update N1MM THAT DAY so
that it would be ready for the contest. I updated N1MM around
9pm Fri evening and indeed he had added DX contacts as separate multipliers for
the OKQP. Wow, that was really impressive. Thanks John!
Since it had been a while since our last qso party, we allocated some extra
time on Fri night to check out Bob's truck. That turned
out to be a good decision. The first problem we had was not being able to get
power to the rig runner Bob had installed behind the seat.
Bob has put together a very nice installation for HF in his truck. This
problem turned out to be that the power cable from the battery had frayed
and we had to replace it. This was in front of my house (Ron, AD0DX) and so we
loaded up and drover over to Bob's house.
On the way to Bob's house, we found that we could not get the swr down on Bob's
TarHeel Jr that had served us well in KS.
By now it was 9 or 9:30 pm and so
we were anxious to start the 2 hour drive to Joplin MO where we were going to
sleep so that we were close to the OK border. Bob had
50 ft of new coax so we replaced the existing coax and the swr problem was
solved. Anxious to get going, we just decided to use the 50 ft
run of coax.
We crossed the OK border about 20 min early which was nice. Our first surprise
of the day was the DeLorme software had us turning off of
the turnpike but there was no interchange to exit the highway. I had caught
this in one other location earlier in the week while
checking our route and had changed the route accordingly.
In this instance I had wanted to get off the Turnpike early to make a short
detour and pick up Delaware county. We just kept driving
rather than backtrack knowing that we were going to hit Delaware on Sunday.
40 mtrs was ok on Sat morning but we never got a really good pileup going.
When we tried 20mtrs later in the afternoon we found that
we had a lot of engine noise. This really prevented us from operating on
20mtrs while driving. This is something that Bob is planning
on investigating. If anyone has any advice for dealing with engine noise on
diesel trucks please email me at the address below.
Later on Sat afternoon it seemed that there was a lot of noise on the radio.
Just for fun I turned off the inverter used to keep the
logging / navigation laptop running. The background noise died down quite a
lot. It seems like the inverter had gotten
progressively noisier and we had not noticed. I'm guessing due to the heat
because the inverter was crammed behind the passenger
seat in the truck and sitting next to the body of the FT-857. From that point
on we played a game of leaving the inverter off as
much as possible and only turning the inverter on (and the radio off) when
necessary. This inverter had worked well for Bob W0BH and
myself in the MN qso party, so I was suprised it was causing us trouble now.
Sigh.
We really enjoyed our route. We started in Ottawa at the NE corner of OK and
our most southern and western point was the SW corner of Love
County where we were only a few miles from the Red River and the Texas border.
We stuck to 40 mtrs and 15 mtrs most of the time on Sat,
only working 20mtrs when stopped due to the engine noise. One exception to
that was when we called cq once on 20 ssb and got a response
from ND. It was great to work ND during the contest, now if only I could work
ND more often from home for my 5BWAS :-).
We stayed overnight in Atoka OK and started out early again so we were almost
to the Pittsburg county line when the bell rang at 8am on
Sunday. This weekend was my first time driving around OK and there are some
very nice areas. The eastern counties are very lush and it looks
like it would be fun to visit in the summer.
Thanks to everyone for all the qso's during the contest. Thanks to Bob W0BH
for taking me along on the TXQP / IAQP / MNQP where he taught
me all about mobile contesting but apparently I still have a lot to learn. I
look forward to seeing you all in August for the KSQP.
Cheers,
Ron, AD0DX (and Bob, K1BBR)
ad0dx at yahoo dot com
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.hornucopia.com/3830score/
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