Florida QSO Party
Call: K1XX/MANY
Operator(s): W1MD K1XX
Station: K1XX
Class: M/SCW LP
QTH: Many
Operating Time (hrs): 20
Summary:
Band CW Qs Ph Qs
--------------------
40: 187
20: 1866
15: 264
10: 6
--------------------
Total: 2323 0 CW Mults = 73 Ph Mults = 0 Total Score = 678,316
Club: Florida Contest Group
Comments:
Once again, Murphy struck. This year we beat him. Coming out of Pinellas right
after the start on Saturday, we lost close to an hour due to a traffic accident.
We decided to push hard and try to make up that time. Yours truly missed the
exit off of I-75 heading to Citrus and managed to lose another 10-12 minutes.
At the end of the day's run, we ran short of time and couldn't get to Union
& Bradford, ending with 26 out of the planned 28 counties.
After getting settled into our cozy roach motel for the remainder of the
evening, I spent some time with my route planning tools and figured out a way
to start in Bradford, go to Union, and then pick up our planned route for
Sunday without wasting too much time. I figured we could push as long as we
could on Sunday and make 53 or 54 total counties. Our goal had been 27 on
Sunday for a total of 55 counties. At 6pm Sunday evening, we had made it
through the complete 27 + 2 = 29 counties equaling our planned 55 counties for
the weekend.
A few things stand out on this FQP. Our run into Lake county was maybe a mile
long with a U turn in the middle. Congratulations to the 4 stations that
managed to catch us there. I don'r remember turning the engine off on Sunday.
Marty & I got pretty proficient when pulling into a gas station. We loaded
the car with gas, unloaded the operators (maybe Depends next year!), swapped
the driver/operator and took off down the road. Lastly, we were in the last
few hours and had turned onto a 2-lane road. I remember Marty accelerating to
pass someone. I saw that car not too far away on my right side. Then, I
looked to the left and there was a big, white truck passing us too! At that
point I just put my head down and prayed for more than Qs.
The new car and custom roof mount for the Tarheel seemed to work well.
Conditions were a bit strange. 40 wasn't as popular on Sunday morning as in
the past. 15 seemed to be wide open a lot, but most people seemed to like 20.
Good Europeans on 15. Thanks to Andy, G4PIQ, for picking us up out of the noise
on 10.
All in all, another great FQP weekend. Thanks for all the Qs and putting up
with our garbage sending. Bouncing around in the backseat is not a great way
to send CW.
Rig was a K3, with the Tarheel 2 antenna over a 4x4 foot solid aluminum ground
plane on the roof rack. Used CQ/x for logging and some navigation. Installed
independent laptop as second navigation source in the front seat using Streets
& Trips. Also experimented with putting our route onto my Android
cellphone. Will probably change this a bit next year with different logging
s/w and simplified navigation s/w.
73 Charlie, k1xx & Marty, w1md
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