Texas QSO Party
Call: W5CT
Operator(s): W5MJ K5PI
Station: W5MJ
Class: Multi-Op Mobile LP
QTH: TX
Operating Time (hrs): 18
Summary:
Band CW Qs Ph Qs Dig Qs
----------------------------
160:
80:
40: 381 38
20: 753 73
15: 80 1
10:
6:
2:
UHF:
----------------------------
Total: 1214 112 0 Mults = 123 Total Score = 512,018
Club: Central Texas DX and Contest Club
Comments:
W5MJ and I went a-roving in the Texas QSO Party again this year. We’d planned
this event as a twosome but at the last minute our old friend Mr. Murphy showed
up and expanded the team.
Last year, the Turbo Tuner went on strike the night before TQP. Since we
couldn’t automagically tune the Tarheel, we decided to just it for 40 only.
We put a magnet mount and a 20M hamstick on the hood and roared off. Those
antennas worked well on the air, but Madison’s Jeep protested mightily.
Various lights on the dash went on and off all weekend. Saturday evening the
Check Engine light on �" and stayed on. We managed to complete our route
but a chip under the hood had to be replaced, making our adventure significantly
more expensive than planned.
Fast forward to this year. A little cleanup and tighten had gotten the Tarheel
going again �" or so we thought! Just before this year’s event, the
Turbo Tuner again went on vacation. What to do?! We decided to again keep the
Tarheel on 40M and to use other antennas on the high bands.
Several CTDXCC friends stepped up to assist. “King Burrito” K5NA lent us a
trailer hitch mount, to which we attached KV5V’s Hustler mast and resonators
for 20 and 15. Madison had a flash of inspiration and had an extension welded
on for an additional mount off the trailer hitch. That would hold a hamstick
for 10. Madison set up some great grounding, and I tweaked all the antennas
into resonance.
After conferring with TQP Grand Poobah, NO5W, we planning a route that would
take us in generally the same direction as last year �" north from Austin
to the counties bordering Oklahoma. We’d spend the night north of DFW, then
loop around the metroplex, through Athens and Corsicana, to Waco and back home.
We planned a little over 10 hours of driving on Saturday and about 5 on Sunday,
having learned from last year that “stuff happens”.
I loaded the route into NO5W’s CQ/X great GPS-integrated logging program, and
we were ready to go!
We blasted off on time but almost from our first QSO, we had some challenges.
The biggest one was RFI. Our connection between the laptop and the rig was
completely overwhelmed. The GPS interface was suffering, too, but it was
serviceable. Some of the nicer features of the software (e.g., time to next
county) were only intermittent. The Winkey held up but speed changes once
transmitting were hit-or-miss. Torroids, you say? Nope, but guess what’s at
the top of list to bring next year! And the Jeep was protesting again, with
several dash lights indicating On The Air status.
We wrestled a bit with the software, too. NO5W has been very patient with us
as we ask him to make all features of his program work exactly as we want by
simply by hitting the Enter key.
Then we made a couple wrong turns and lost almost an hour. We hit some weather
that slowed us down, too. But the QSOs were going into the log, and that makes
everything all right!
By the time we got up to near Abilene, we realized we were going to have to
adjust our route or we’d be very late getting to Denton. The only good
option seemed to be to head straight for Wichita Falls. Unfortunately, that
took Wilbarger, Foard, and Hardeman counties off our route. Near Denton, we
did add a minor detour to add Cooke and Grayson.
We saw a lot of pretty country, but we believe we discovered the roughest paved
road in Texas �" 1810 west of Decatur. Madison apologizes if he was slow
to respond or sent your call wrong -- it was like trying to type will riding a
horse! He’s acquainted with the Wise County judge and is preparing a lawsuit
for whiplash and general pain and summering. It was so bumpy, the sleeve on or
Hustler mast worked its way down and briefly changed our 20/15 antenna into an
inverted L!
Band conditions seemed quite good on Saturday. Twenty was a little slow to
open, but then was very solid. After sunset, 40 was very good and gave us some
of the best rate of the entire day.
We spent the night in Denton and dreamed of high rate and no RFI.
Sunday was MUCH smoother. We’d developed workarounds for almost all our
glitches. The vehicle warning lights were annoying but didn’t seem to be of
any lasting consequence. We got a rhythm going with the software and managed
to stay on course. We made one unplanned county line stop to work through a
nice pileup, but got back on schedule and ended just where we planned.
Band conditions on Sunday seemed quite different. Signals on 20M were down
considerably, although 40 was good into much of the country into the early
afternoon.
We tried 15 a few times but couldn’t get much traction. Our European repeat
customers would find us there, but we couldn’t get much going stateside.
We operated about 90% CW. Neither of us has much patience for phone, but there
are lots of contacts to be made there. It seems if you want to do SSB, you have
to go regularly to establish a presence.
We made almost exactly the same number of QSOs as last year but managed a dozen
more mults.
We’re brainstorming about how to take care of this year’s issues. See you
next year!
de K5PI
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