Florida QSO Party
Call: N4TO/M
Operator(s): +K1TO
Station: N4TO/M
Class: MobileCW LP
QTH:
Operating Time (hrs): 20
Summary:
Band CW Qs Ph Qs
--------------------
40: 118
20: 2072
15: 0
10: 0
--------------------
Total: 2190 0 CW Mults = 67 Ph Mults = 0 Total Score = 586,920
Club: Florida Contest Group
Comments:
Thanks again to Vic, N4TO for supplying the vehicle, antenna, radio and all
accessories.
Highlights
+ Activity was up again this year, with lots of repeat participants! We had no
expectations of even coming close to last year's effort, let alone surpassing
the QSO total!
+ Several out-of-state mobiles joined the fun, too!
+ No weather problems or car problems
+ Hit all 44 counties planned, with a fairly convenient stop-over at K1TO for
Sat. nite
+ Speaker allowed us both to shout out callsigns if we copied different
callers
+ Worked a TOad high of 44 states including KH6, plus 6 VE mults.
+ Vic's numerous friends, many of them DX, dropped in for one or more Qs.
+ Interesting propagation "cliffs" on 20M. NC, and even extreme northern GA,
was not workable day one from north FL, then was routine on day two from south
FL counties.
+ Good choice to return to HARdee at the end. We'd made 56 Qs early Sunday, yet
still made 28 Qs in the first 6 minutes when we returned!
Lowlights
- Chirp was persistent. Stopping made it worse, so many of our planned stops
were shortened or eliminated, messing up our schedule a bit.
- 15M stopped working once the FQP started. ZERO QSOs on 15 for us and at least
15 minutes of wasted time trying 15M.
- New auto ant. tuner did not help - in fact, it cost us time
- Our handsent CW got sloppy at times if the road was rough or we were tired.
Vic vows to upgrade to a laptop next year.
- The paddle we used all day Saturday died at exactly 12Z Sunday. Good thing
Vic had a "hot spare" and we only lost the first 3 minutes Sunday.
- FL Highway Patrol curtailed our planned 15 minutes in NASsau. Made 20Q in 4
minutes...
- Less SSB QSYs this year.
- Wrong turns kept us in GIL, LEV and POL longer than expected. LEVy was
especially painful since it was already a "long" county.
- Traffic at the start was horrendous near Disney World. We spent too much time
in ORAnge as a result.
- Love Bugs were indeed an issue in some of the southern counties. We
proclaimed GLAdes, then STLucie the Love Bug capitals for this year. Pictures
were taken after Sunday's "run" and will be posted soon.
- 40M CW was tough for our European friends, since our suggested freq was in
the middle of digital QRM in Europe.
Compared our log to the K4FCG posting and found a different list of stations who
we worked at least 20 times. Team FCG worked 10 stations at least 20 times that
we worked less than 20x. But Team TOad worked 9 other stations at least 20x
that Team FCG worked less often. Since our SSB was almost non-existent and 15M
was totally non-existent, our "champ" had just 40 QSOs with us.
We received 447 logs for 2002 and are on a pace to get over 600 this year!
Thanks to all who participated and made the 2003 FQP the best yet! Electronic
logs can be sent to flqsoparty@aol.com
73, Dan, K1TO, 1/2 of Team TOad with N4TO/m
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.hornucopia.com/3830score/
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