Pennsylvania QSO Party
Call: K8MR/3
Operator(s): K8MR, W8DRZ
Station: K8MR/3
Class: Mobile LP
QTH: 23 Counties
Operating Time (hrs): 13
Summary:
Band CW Qs Ph Qs
--------------------
160:
80: 130 9
40: 365 72
20: 168 17
15: 31 10
10: 1 0
6:
2:
--------------------
Total: 695 108 Mults = 104 Total Score = 137,912.0
Club: North Coast Contesters
Comments:
The mults include 53 sections, 50 counties, 1 DX. The score includes 13,500
points for visiting 23 counties.
The K8MR/W8DRZ Road Warriors finished out our 2002 season with a one day
(Saturday) visit to Pennsylvania. We considered doing both days, but decided it
was just too much to operate all day, find a place to stay at who knows where in
the middle of the night, and then get up to safely do it again the next day. In
our case this is made even tougher by the fact that 'DRZ normally wakes up at
3:30 am to be at work at 5 am, so his body has extra adaptation do deal with in
these late hours.
I was a bit disappointed in the tourist aspect of the trip. With the warm fall
so far, the leaves were just beginning to change color, so had not reached their
peak fall colors. And we never saw a bit of sun, and had a lot of drizzle and
some fog, though no heavy rain.
Radio conditions seemed pretty good, although from listening around at home on
Sunday, the second day seemed better, with shorter skip on the high bands.
I have now figured out that PA involves different mobiling strategy than OH and
MI. Since mults count only one time, there is little incentive for PA big guns
to follow and work mobiles on CW, as they will probably get an in-state clean
sweep from the casual ops calling in on SSB. There was only one PA station,
KA3S, who seemed to be working us from just about every county. It also becomes
more important to work lots of PA guys on 40 SSB to get the county multipliers.
I tried to do this, but when S&Ping we would get beat in any pileup by any fixed
station who was also calling. I suspect we would have had better luck at this
second day when pileups were smaller.
Pennsylvania sure tries to keep its county lines secret. The county signs are
on the same small signs as township lines, and in several cases we found those
signs posted on the left hand side of the road! In several places road
construction had the right edge blocked off. I don't think we missed any lines
by great distances, though many times we "changed" counties by our best guess of
where a curve in the road coincided with a curve on the map.
Breakdown by county:
CW SSB
MER 18 4
VEN 20 4
BUT 22 0
ARM 12 4
CLA 35 7
JEF 23 11
FOR 38 17
WAR 12 3
MCK 33 2
ELK 42 22
CLE 45 8
CEN 42 4
BLA 35 0
HUN 48 7
MIF 20 7
JUN 33 7
PER 31 2
FRA 27 0
FUL 29 0
BED 44 0
SOM 27 9
WES 36 0
ALL 23 0
See you again when we take to the road in the 2003 Michigan QSO Party next
April!
73 - Jim K8MR
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.hornucopia.com/3830score/
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