7th Call Area QSO Party
Call: N7WA/M
Operator(s): K7TQ N7WA
Station: N7WA/M
Class: M/S MobileCW LP
QTH:
Operating Time (hrs): 18
Summary:
Band CW Qs Ph Qs Dig Qs
----------------------------
160: 0 0 0
80: 126 0 0
40: 232 0 0
20: 464 0 0
15: 0 0 0
10: 0 0 0
6: 0 0 0
2: 0 0 0
----------------------------
Total: 822 0 0 Mults = 59 Total Score = 145,494
Club:
Comments:
Randy K7TQ and I usually run separate mobile operations for the 7QP. Due to the
loss of Randy's usual partner (Jay W0WWW) due to work, he wondered if he could
help me and I snapped him up. Usually I have to run solo on county lines. This
would allow us to run continuously for the 18 hours. But where to start?
Randy lives in Idaho and I live on the rainy side of Washington. Bob N7AU and
his wife Diane KB7JPX offered us a place to crash Friday night and Saturday
night after the test. They live smack in the middle of eastern Washington
(Ephrata) between the two of us and a perfect location to start our route.
Google estimated that Randy had to drive two minutes longer than I did to get
to Bob's.
The route is shown at
https://sites.google.com/site/randyk7tq/home/2017-7th-call-area-qso-party and
it was good one. Aggressive but doable. Randy had us timed out to the minute
and I dare-say, it worked out just as he planned (with one minor exception). He
even has a cool home-brewed Arduino-based timer that tracks the time. That
exception? Well, the road to Ferry county was closed (it's prone to slides) so
we had to back track into Lincoln and go around. That meant we spent double the
time in Lincoln but we put it to good use and lots of Q's.
We did have to start about 80 minutes early from Bob's to get to the first
county so we were on the road even longer than the 18 hours. We would switch
between driving and operating about every three hours. Then, unilaterally,
Randy changed the rules on me and made me operate the last chunk. In
hind-sight, he knew best because the last part of the route was territory where
I had never been and very very dark. I even asked a stupid question about
10:30PM local time.
"Do you know where we are?"
"Yes!" was the answer.
Whew! Back to my key.
We were going to try a KX2 as a second radio for the op to listen on the
alternate band. Even with a bandpass filter, there was too much signal from the
primary rig (KX3/KXPA100) overloading the KX2. That worked out ok because
frequently we were working as a team to decode signals as they came in. As you
get tired, the brain gets a bit mushy and a second brain helps even things out.
Otherwise, the equipment worked well. We had some crackling on the 20M antenna
early on but it seemed to work itself out. There was some weird very low level
background noise on 40M but I think it was the truck. It almost sounded like
someone tuning up with a series of dits but the frequency changed with time. I
don't think it was an impediment to copy, just irritating sometimes. The 80M
antenna was a bit persnickety on tuning but once I found the sweet spot, the
KXPA100 was happy. The KX3 likes to jump into Dual Watch mode (turns on the sub
receiver) which could be confusing when unexpected. I had a function programmed
to turn it off. I just had to remember that I had that function.
In the end, we worked over a hundred Q's on 80, doubled that for 40M, and
doubled that for 20M. 15m was a dog. We tried a couple times. Nothing heard,
nothing worked. We said we would try some SSB but it never happened. Neither of
us cried any tears about that. :>)
Lots of people followed us. N6MU (23), NX6T (18), W0BH (15), DL5AWI(13) come to
mind. There many others. DX was limited to some Europeans, one JA (JA1YNE), and
a Columbian. The bands were better than I expected (20-80) and the east coast
was workable on 40/80. That's probably a better testament to their ears than my
inefficient antennas. I think Randy had fun. I know I did. I thank you all for
playing. I thank Bob and Diane for letting us stay. And Randy, thanks for
asking if you could join me in the effort.
Oh, one more thing, we didn't beat you this year Dick (K4XU/K7XU), but we have
your tail lights in our sights... :>)
cheers dink, n7wa
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