Missouri QSO Party
Call: AD0DX
Operator(s): AD0DX KD0OJX
Station: AD0DX
Class: Rover Multi-Op LP
QTH: MO
Operating Time (hrs): 18
Summary:
Band CW Qs Ph Qs
--------------------
160:
80:
40: 108 38
20: 281 48
15: 160
10:
--------------------
Total: 549 76 Mults = 62 Total Score = 72,888
Club:
Comments:
We had a lot of fun as W0H/M in the MOQP. On Sat my friend Ronald KD0OJX was
the driver and on Sunday my xyl Cathy drove.
My setup is an ICOM 7000 using two Hustler verticals, each working 3 bands.
Because 10 and 15 have been so hot, I set up one antenna
for 10/15/20 CW and the other one for 20/10 Phone and 40CW. It turns out that
this was not optimal for a contest like the MOQP
where counties are multipliers. I use DeLorme Street Maps, but have had
problems with the USB Gps and the icom rig control conflicting in
some way. So I left off the gps. This turned out to be a bad idea.
I like the IC7000 for mobile contesting. The noise blanker and noise reduction
features work pretty well. We had some bad power line noise
more than once and these features helped. But the radio does run hot. And
when the sun is also directly on the radio, it gets really hot.
Sat we got an early start and were able to start the contest at the Clay /
Clinton county line.
I called CQ and I had one person answer, John N6MU. I have no idea how John
does it, but it seems each time I cross a county line
he is there waiting. After John, I worked JI3MJK. Wow, Japan on 20mtrs from
my van, this is going to be a good day.
Somehow we missed Gentry county. We had a 5 mile detour planned on State Road Z
to pick up Gentry, and somehow we missed the turn.
We were about 10 miles down the road when I realized we had missed the turn. I
decided to keep going, because we would have lost time
backtracking.
Things were going well until Sullivan county. In order to pick up more
counties and not spend 40 min in some of the larger counties, I
had us going on a few 'state roads'. These are minor roads that are not always
maintained well. So we headed south on State Road EE...
and after 15 or 20 min it was obvious that something was not right. Checking
the map after we got home, I see that we stayed
on EE too long and missed a turn. Unfortunately EE turned back west when I
wanted to be going south east.
So we lost an hour once we figured out where we were and then decided to stick
with major roads to get back on track.
So we spent a lot of time in Sullivan county.
I had something similar planned for Clark county in the NE corner of Missouri.
I was going to go on state roads and stay on the west
side of Clark, but after the bad experience in Sullivan I decided we should go
over to the east side of Clark to pick up Hwy 61 which is
the only major north south road in Clark. This change cost us another 40
minutes. So now we are about 2 hours behind schedule. Darn.
Somewhere during the morning, WA6KHK told me on CW that he needed Knox and
Shelby. I said that I'd be glad to look for him. And sure
enough when I crossed those lines he was there waiting for me and I was glad to
give him those counties on 20m CW.
Ronald and I stopped for gas and food in Canton, MO, right next to the
Mississippi River.
Once on Saturday I answered a cw cq 'CQ MQP de ...'. I answered and was
surprised that the county didn't seem correct. It took me too long
to realize that with 3 'M' qso parties on the same day (Missouri / Montana /
Mississippi) that he must be in a different party. It's
probably not a good idea to call 'CQ MQP' under those circumstances.
Late on Saturday afternoon Ronald and I were sitting on a county line, and when
I unplugged the headphones, the speakers were making the
cw sound funny. At first I was very concerned, but then I realized it was just
the radio running hot. It wasn't hot enough for air
conditioning on Sat, and I think by late afternoon after being on for 6 or 8
hours the radio was really running very hot.
This contest I used the 800 / 500 / 300 hz filters on CW. This worked out
pretty well, but occasionally in a large pileup the receiver
does get overwhelmed. I'm thinking about the K3 with those crystal filters.
So we ended the day in Chariton county.
On Sunday my XYL Cathy was the driver and she did a great job. We left the
house at 8am because I wanted to get half way through Johnson
county and also get away from Kansas City / Jackson county where there are lots
of operators. Missouri is a beautiful state, and we
enjoyed driving through the Lake of the Ozarks region. Before I moved to
Missouri I always thought the Ozarks were in Arkansas for
some reason.
On Sunday we stopped for gas in Jefferson City and I checked the MOQP Facebook
page. There was a comment there from someone that they were unable
to find the 'H' in 'SHOWME'. The day before Randy had posted a question to the
Facebook page asking if anyone had worked W0H. I had 400
qso's on Saturday... mostly on CW. I just really enjoy CW. I decided that I
should change my 40mtr antenna resonator from 40CW to
40SSB. This took about 15 min off my schedule, but I thought if it gets more
people the 'H' on phone so that they can spell 'SHOWME' then
it is worth it. I guess this week I'll go out and buy a second 40mtr resonator
so I can work both 40 CW and Phone.
I never did use the MO qso party spotting tool. I guess I could have used my
iPhone, but when you are mobile there are only so many things
that you can do at once. I guess
Each time that I crossed a county line or changed bands, I called 'CQ de W0H/M'
on cw so that I was picked up on the reverse beacon network.
This seems to work really well, and after a while you can tell those operators
who are watching the reverse beacon network.
I never did make any contacts on 10 mtrs. I probably called cq there 2 or 3
times. I did go to the 10mtr ssb freq 28350 on Sunday afternoon,
and there was a net operating. I moved down to 28347 to get away from the net
but stay close to the published party freq, and then someone
came down and asked me to move because I was disturbing the net. That really
surprised me, I thought that 3Khz would be plenty far away.
I called cq a few times on 28345 and then went back to CW.
Thanks to everyone for all the Qso's and also to Randy and the team at BEARS
for really taking the MOQP to the next level. I'm looking forward
to next year.
73's and thanks for the QSO's,
Ron, AD0DX/W0H
Cathy
Ronald, KD0OJX
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