Congrats to team TOad - once again proving TWO TO's are better than one!
N4KM and K4OJ once again activated the club call K4FCG this year - we made a
few driving errors on the first day which team TO was kind enough to correct
on the second day...part of this was due to being a little frazzled at the
beginning of the contest...
The one thing I did not check out BEFORE the contest almost spelled
disaster - I was in charge of the computer/station and N4KM had the xcvr and
antennas installed on his new Nissan - what a great ride for ths trip...
As we connected the gear all together on Saturday morning the laptop wasn't
working - I had loaded all the NA files into it the night before and did
some trial logging and it seamed fine....the problem came in that I had done
this software stuff from home using the AC adaptor.
I had bought an off the shelf DC adaptor for the laptop power and just
plugged everything in - BIG MISTAKE.
The DC adaptor had reversable polarity on the plug and sure enough it was
exactly wrong.
Not knowing what we would find Kevin, N4KM said let's take a look inside -
as a QCAO the thought of opening up a Thinkpad Laptop and doing diagnostics
blew my mind!
After about 45 or 50 screws were removed the power supply board was found
and this little teenie tiny surface mount fuse, about the size of a grain of
rice - was found to be open....being the weekend with only a couple of hours
until the start of FQP it was decided to bridge the fuse with solder and see
if that was the only thing wrong with the computer. Mind you at this point
I had about soiled my britches...but, sure enough together it went and voila
it booted!
There is a Florida Contest God!
Now that the laptop was working we finished installing all of our gear off
we went - at the start of the contest we were running behind - had hoped to
start in Osceola but since we were running late it was actually Polk we
started in...I was so frazzled I completely forgot we were supposed to
detour into Okeechobee as one of our first counties and by the time I
realised we had missed it we were passed it - thanks to K1TO/N4TO for
covering that one Sunday...
The previous weekend we had gotten together with the Two TO's at a Floirda
cOntest Group meeting and decided to run opposite ends of the state in
oppostie directions each day - that way if one of us had an opportunity to
offer a sweep there would be a greater chance of it happening.
After a couple of hours into the contest activity really seemed to pick up
and for several hours on Saturday afternoon we were able to work as well on
15 as we were on 20 - this was fun since the same core group could work us
in the same county at least twice, now!
We made good time Saturday despite hitting the detour WD4AHZ warned us
about, and ended up adding Pinellas, and Hillsborough as well as Pasco to
our Saturday tally....at the end of the first day N4TO and K4FCG were both
in Pasco - suspect we were going in opposite directions on I75! Could hear
them "blowing by" the filters, hi!
Managed to get going ok on Sunday - we got off a little earlier than planned
so added a side trip to Citrus into the mix...dunno if that is my favorite
county or ORA, Orange!
conditions were definatley not as good on Sunday as they were Saturday, the
killer signals of GM3POI was down to s8 or s9...and 15 wasn't there for
double band core group QSOs
We knew that HA1AG needed Putnam bad so we parked there for almost an hour
and made 88 QSOs - unfortunately no Zoli to be found :-(
Things ran smooth Sunday - with all the activity from KH2D we decided to
skip hittting Northernmost Nassau and just high tailed it down 95
South...because we did that we got to return at the end to Osceola and Polk
counties.
N4KM has a great ride - it was a real pleasure to operate the FQP in style
mobile - the gear worked well - he had two antennas we could bounce
between - a screwdriver and a 20 meter ham stick.
35 Counties
1955 QSOs (1943 on CW)
20 hours...
Biggest QSOs county = Palm Beach @ 134 QSOs - 68 on 20 CW and 65 on 15 CW -
that was fun!
Average QSOs per county = 56
That's almost a hundred an hour average - thanks to everyone who
participated in the FQP, you made it fun for us guys big time!
The N4TO TOads made 2195 QSOs in 44 counties...incredable. between our two
efforts alone there were 4150 QSOs!!!!!
3830 reports keep coming in and it looks like we may have a record number of
county sweeps - including a QRP entrant and a European!
My special thanks to friend N4KM - we had a blast this weekend...if this
ain't what ham radio is about I dunno what it should be!
All of that said, one more thing....
363 Days til the next FQP, 2,003!
:-)
Jim, K4OJ
(+ N4KM ======> K4FCG/M)
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