Florida QSO Party
Call: N8II
Operator(s): N8II
Station: N8II
Class: SOABMixed LP
QTH: WV
Operating Time (hrs): 7.1
Summary:
Band CW Qs Ph Qs
--------------------
40: 55 1
20: 155 152
15: 10
10:
--------------------
Total: 220 153 CW Mults = 64 Ph Mults = 44 Total Score = 128,088
Club: Potomac Valley Radio Club
Comments:
I operated only a little while around sunset Saturday after spending most the
the day at Caledonia State Park in nearby PA. 20 was marginal with virtually
nothing north of central FL heard, some south FL were pretty loud. 40 was
incredible except for the high QRN, but even most mobiles were good copy there.
Early Sunday was a bummer with low activity on 40 at 1320Z and I was also unable
to get through to a loud AD4ES/M on CW and K4F on phone. 20 was open to south
FL, but there were only a few really loud signals. I tried a run on 20 SSB
around 1415Z and no one answered.
At 1445 20M was still poor with weak to silent mobiles from north FL and even
some weak ones in south FL. I checked 15 at 1455 and was amazed to actually
hear signals. There may have been some weak sporadic E. The best signals were S
7-9 and others were more or less pure backscatter, but quite readable. K4OJ/M
was the only mobile heard/worked. Returning to 20 at 1514Z, I had an amazing
SSB run with
a great rate and 2-3 callers at a time quite often. 20 remained pretty good for
the rest of my operating and I had another good SSB run in the 20Z hour. All day
Sunday, I was able to break most of the CW mobile pile ups quickly, even when
the mobiles were weak. North FL was the problem area and was happy to get 64
counties in my short 7 hours on the air. Mobile activity only 20 phone was
quite low, but I kept getting new mults in runs and added a few thanks to
George, K4KG/M QSY'ing
from CW.
Many thanks to all of the mobiles who dodged storms, heat, and traffic to
keep things interesting. I found myself tuning the mobile CW window only fairly
often on 20 when I was not trying to run on SSB which seemed to work pretty
well. There was no big opening on 15 here in the afternoon, too close, just a
couple of weak scatter signals already worked. The number of CW mobiles did not
disappoint. Some were missed due to no prop in north FL for sure and 40 was not
working well enough to work them until about 20Z when the local QRN from a
nearby storm was really high! I quit around 2122Z due to WX and could hear
thunder, but the storm dissipated just before 22Z without a drop of rain here.
The propagated QRN on 20 was high enough to be a bother both days and a couple
of SSB stations were just too weak to be be heard thru the static. Overall, I
would say the QRN for the whole contest was the worst in memory.
Thanks for all of the QSO's including quite a few casual ops on 20 who lent a
hand to me. Apparently there were not very many out of state CQ'ers on 20 SSB.
I was a bit too close to fully utilize 20, yet 40 was pretty worthless mid
day.
73, Jeff
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