Kansas QSO Party - 2020
Call: N4CD
Operator(s): N4CD
Station: N4CD
Class: Mobile Unassisted LP
QTH:
Operating Time (hrs): 14.5
Summary:
Band CW Qs Ph Qs Dig Qs
----------------------------
80:
40:
20:
15:
10:
6:
----------------------------
Total: 556 0 0 Mults = 58 Total Score = 98,310
Club:
Comments:
Decided to wander to KS this year for the QP from TX. About six hour drive just
to get up there from the Dallas area. Would risk two nights, maybe 3 in KS
motels. I try to pick ones with exterior room doors so no need to go through
common areas. Eating out is the main risk.....and I pack some canned meals I
can nuke in a microwave otherwise.
Guess I was the only mobile using my own call. And only one 'unassisted' - just
me driving and operating. Every other mobile was a 1x1 call. For county
hunting, if I used a 1x1 call, I'd lose all the benefits of my own call as a 1x1
would not count for most of the advanced county hunting awards. They don't
translate to a 1x1 call. So I had the 'longest' mobile call but a 1x2 wasn't as
bad, but I wasn't as 'popular' as a 1x1 since I didn't help spell out the
'words' like KS, SUNFLOWER, YELLOWBRICKROAD.....
Also made 100Qs on 30M for the county hunters (Who try to work all the counties
on each band these days) - along with park chasers who might only have
propagation on this band with the squirrely conditions we have. Those don't
count by still take time - hi hi. No sunspots for this Qso Party - nada. DX
was a bit scarce and mostly on Saturday.
I headed to KS and ran a few parks/counties on Friday to start in SE corner on
Saturday at 1400z. Heavy rain tended to de-tune antennas as raindrops sat on
top of resonators when not moving....and I stopped to run the parks/counties
Started in southeast corner of KS in driving rain, t-storm, lightning zipping
down all over with S9 static on radio. Made it a bit tough. Not far away 55
mph winds were recorded - and you'd see little branches/leaves covering the
roads. My route was not 'direct' by any means. I took detours to get the the
KS State Parks and the State Fishing Lakes - many which took 25 mile detours and
some requiring traveling 20-30 miles on gravel roads at 30 mph and one stretch
for a mile or two at 10 mph. So I didn't rack up the county count by any
means but put out 18 parks on the trip. Objective #1 met.
Rain continued - for six hours in that park of KS. Lighting on and off for 4
hours. You get a bit distracted as lightning zaps down a few miles away as you
are trying to run a pileup. W4X - static crash - ?O......so a few repeats
needed.
Bands were OK for this part of the sunspot cycle. A few weeks ago, the SFI
actually bounced up into the 70s but this year stuck at 68 and 69, with the A
hitting 26 on Sunday, K=3. That sort of doomed DX other than the very loud
contest type stations in EU.
In some counties, had two or three parks to run so spent a lot of time in those
counties.
Made 556 Qs on 20 and 40M. Worked 44 states - nada on AK HI NV, ND, SD, DE and
only 3 Canadian Provinces caught. Only a handful of KS counties caught - most
at ESP levels. Hard to break pileups of S9 signals calling when the mobile is
S2 at the time. So missed most of KS.
Ran into fellow park activator K0BWR at Chase State Fishing Lake. 599 signals
at 50 feet for sure in that county - CHS. Otherwise, just saw spots for
mobiles and heard pileups of those calling and no copy on 99% of their runs.
Wandered along and wound up near I-135. My Verizon Cellphone wasn't working.
By Sunday 3pnm, the band activity vanished. All the county hunters vanished. I
decided that it wouldn't be worth sticking around in KS and the forecast for my
route home through OK to TX was decent on Sunday afternoon but horrendous
storms forecast for Monday all across the central/east part of the state.
Rather than spend another night in KS then fight my way home through bad
weather, bugged out right after contest ended. Wound up passing through Hesston
KS and waved at W0BH, Bob, the KS QP 'spark plug' who gets all the activity
going each year. Drove till 8pm and crashed in southern OK in Ardmore.
On Monday, the skies opened over OK and six inches of rain/big t-storms fell
along my route home. Managed to avoid all that by the 5 hour drive south after
the QP....then that rain hit Dallas Monday night with six inches of rain,
t-storms. Had to forego a few more parks.
Main purpose of trip was to put out (activate) parks in KS, followed by putting
out counties for the County Hunters, then putting out the counties for the KS
QP. The 3 conflicted a bit with each other . Had fun (most of the time) -
might be the first time I wandered to KS for the QP. Probably did 100 miles on
gravel roads to the State Fishing Lakes. Some easy to find. Some really,
really in boonies.
rig - IC-706, ant - six foot mast on mag mount on truck deck with resonators
for 17,20,30 and 40M.
73 and most likely CU in the TX QSO Party coming up soon!
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