Minnesota QSO Party
Call: N8II
Operator(s): N8II
Station: N8II
Class: Single Op HP
QTH: WV
Operating Time (hrs): ~8.5
Summary:
Band CW-RTTY Qs Ph Qs
-------------------------
160: 0 0
80: 15 14
40: 60 2
20: 73 99
15: 3 0
10: 0 0
-------------------------
Total: 151 115 Mults = 82 Total Score = 43,624
Club: Potomac Valley Radio Club
Comments:
It was triumph of the human spirit to drive around handing out counties with
snow wind and sub 10 degree temps! Many thanks to all of the mobiles for
activating all or almost all of the counties! I could tell fairly early on that
it was going to be a little tougher this year for me and I was not planning to
glue myself to the chair. Congrats to Tom, N2CU for a great effort.
The good: Mobile activity on 20 meter phone was up with N0EO himself operating
20 phone while Al was on 40 CW. Also on 20 SSB, Craig KC0DMF/M apparently a
newbie did a good job of running stations from quite a few counties. W9FZ/M
also ran several counties on 20 and W0ZQ showed up when CW slowed down. Thanks
to Rich, N0HJZ for the most mobile Q's and counties, working just 20 phone
until he returned home. 15 was open but not well to SE MN from here and very
underutilized. Conditions on 20 were good up until some time in the last hour.
80 was wide open to MN the last hour and provided my best QSO rate of the party
when I found a group of MN phone ops at about 2355Z!
The bad and the ugly: Lots of 20 M users on both modes made for reduced CW
mobile activity and some tough times on phone. It is very rude and selfish for
a DXpedition to listen from 2 to 22 KHz above their CW frequency! There was
more of the same on phone from two groups. Having three other QP's (the BC guys
were loud on 20) along with the inevitable RTTY test on 40 CW didn't help
either. MN was weak on 40 all day until about 21Z and I could tell some of the
mobiles were sticking to 40 almost all of the time. This is not that bad of a
strategy since that is where the mobiles can work MN counties for a boatload of
mults. I will have to say that almost every in the noise mobile I heard was able
to hear me, good ears! I should have struggled a bit more down there. I found
almost no 40 phone activity. I hit the wall about 21Z until 23Z really
struggling to stay on the radio (took off for 15 minute break and then 20
minute meal) after a poor night's sleep the night before; the rest of the time
I felt OK. Power ran was only 200 W, the amp is down.
Minnesotan hams are a very polite nice bunch of people and are obviously very
dedicated to making the MNQP successful. I guess you have to be in order to
survive the winter. We had a taste here of what they endure for months with the
coldest WX in 20 years starting Jan 20th when it also snowed 7 very powdery
inches. Temps stayed subfreezing until the afternoon of Jan 31st. The snow
finally more or less melted away Sunday with 53 F temp just in time for about 4
very wet heavy inches worth today, Monday. Ice comes tomorrow night.
Thanks to all who have endured so much and still got on the air and thanks, of
course, for the QSO's from all over MN.
73, Jeff N8II
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