Kansas QSO Party
Call: N0A
Operator(s): AD0DX
Station: N0A
Class: Mobile SO Mixed LP
QTH: KS
Operating Time (hrs): 18
Summary:
Band CW Qs Ph Qs Dig Qs
----------------------------
80:
40: 69 0
20: 589 202
15: 120 1
10:
6:
2:
----------------------------
Total: 778 203 981 Mults = 52 Total Score = 142,116
Club:
Comments:
2014 Kansas Qso Party Summary
N0A/M
Score Summary
Band Mode Qsos Points Mults
7 CW 66 198 6
7 LSB 3 6 0
14 CW 589 1764 37
14 USB 202 404 4
21 CW 120 359 5
21 USB 1 2 0
Totals: 981 2733 52
Score: 142,116
This has been a busy summer for me. My oldest son got married and that took up
a lot of our energy,
but I guess I had a little left over for the 2014 KSQP. This is my best score
ever. I was hoping to
get 900 q's and almost made 1000, so I'm really happy with the results.
I changed my route this year. In the past I have stayed for 30 min at the RAW
/ CHY / SMN 3 county line,
but never got great results. This year I skipped the 3 county line (but
covered all the counties)
and went down in the Wallace, Logan, Gove and Trego. This worked out really
well and I actually made all
of my counties on Sat.
On Sun we took a detour to Republic because I didn't work much cw there on Sat,
and so at the end of Sun I missed Wabanausee.
I also noticed last year that John N6MU got Ottawa as his last county, and I
drive very close to it, so I decided to
detour down to Ottawa for 20 min on Sunday. I was able to work a number of
regulars in the KSQP and so I think it was worth the effort.
We had a very young state trooper stop and check us out at the Ellis / Rooks
county line. Thankfully he had heard of
amateur radio and like others we talked to thought it was kind of cool that
this is the weekend where everyone in Canada and
the USA tries to contact someone in Kansas. I tried to explain that counties
are score multipliers without making it too complicated and he seemed
interested.
Probably the most exciting thing that happened was that we saw a semi truck on
fire with huge flames out the back,
when we were driving east on I70 at mile 300 right near Fort Riley. I called
911 and felt like I did my good deed for the day. I hope that driver is ok.
Propagation was very interesting this weekend. I was really surprised when I
worked Texas on 15 mtrs, and it kept happening all
weekend, especially with N5DO. On Sun afternoon 15mtrs was strong and then it
just dropped off.
When I was in Republic W7PFZ indicated that he needed Clay county for the sweep
and so I made sure I worked him in Clay county.
He was blasting in on 15mtrs in Republic and then an hour or so later he was
down to 539 when I worked him in Clay. But I did
work him and get him in the log. I'm really curious to see how many sweeps we
get this year.
It was fun to work the Europeans this year, but it seemed odd not to have OM2VL
in the mix. But I worked G3XVR, SP9LJD and others.
My setup is an ICOM 7000 with two Hustler mag mounts on the roof of my 2005
Chevy Venture. The Hustler antennas have the 'tri'
attachment and one was for 40/20/10 CW and the other was 15CW/20SSB/10SSB.
I didn't have any q's on 10mtrs, so I should probably get another 40mtr
resonator and then I can work 40ssb... maybe I would have worked ND or SD on
ssb, never heard them on 40cw.
I worked all states except for ND, SD, VT and Alaska.
I didn't have any equipment problems, besides the fact that I need to learn how
to put some chokes on my engine to reduce engine noise.
I like the ICOM 7000 as a radio... but it's not a good radio for being on the
receiving end of pileups.
I don't think any DSP I know of that's available has what it takes to really
cut through a good pileup.
I'm seriously thinking about selling the 7000 and buying K3. The K3 seems
like the best of both
worlds; good SDR features but crystal filters for culling down a pileup.
Anyone want to buy a 2 year old barely used ICOM 7000? This is a nice portable
rig.
I didn't have my WINKEYER working for the contest, and so I programmed the
IC-7000 to send 'KSQP N0A/M N0A/' and then I just filled
in the county. I sent the calls of all stations worked using my keyer at
28wpm.
I really have to get that winkeyer back so that I can work cw at 30/32/34 wpm
and hopefully get my rates up.
Another key on the IC-7000 is programmed to send 'CQ CQ CQ DE N0A/M N0A/M'.
The reason for doing this is that the
reverse beacon network does not pick up KSQP DE N0A/A as something to spot. So
by sending 'CQ...', this gets picked up by the
reverse beacon network. It's interesting to see who watches the rbn; often the
Europeans were the first to call me on 15mtrs,
immediately after I called CQ. Thanks to everyone who spotted me. I never
asked anyone, but I'm sure someone did.
At one point I was switching to 20mtr CW, and I noticed that there was a big
signal on 'my' frequency of 14035. I fully understand
that no one owns any frequency in Amateur radio, but I was curious who from the
KSQP was on 14035. So I listened for a few min to find
out which mobile had this huge pileup going, only to find out it was KH6LC.
Oh.
I use N1MM for contesting software. I didn't want to try the new N1MM+ because
I didn't want to risk using brand new software for a real contest.
I really like the ROVERQTH and COUNTYLINE features of N1MM for mobile
contesting. I hope that they brought these features over to N1MM+.
I had 200 phone qsos' in the contest, which is a personal best for me. I'll be
honest; mobile in a contest on phone kind of
intimidates me. CW is much easier. Just crank that filter down and pick out a
signal. Voice has always seemed much more difficult to me.
But somehow for this contest I really got into it and even almost enjoyed it.
Ok I did enjoy it a few times. You can get a nice
rate going. And then when you realize that everyone knows your callsign and
switch over to just 'N0A/M' and stop using
phonetics it gets pretty fast.
Thanks everyone for all the q's and hope to see you next year.
73's, Ron N0A/m (AD0DX)
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