New England QSO Party
Call: WA1Z
Operator(s): WA1Z
Station: WA1Z
Class: SO Mobile LP
QTH: ME/NH
Operating Time (hrs): 20
Summary:
Band CW-Dig Qs Ph Qs
------------------------
80: 92 0
40: 472 1
20: 825 0
15: 53 0
10: 0 0
------------------------
Total: 1442 1 Mults = 78 Total Score = 225,030
Club: Yankee Clipper Contest Club
Comments:
Thanks again to Tom K1KI for organizing another great NEQP! And thanks to
everyone who came along for the ride through the
radio! I hope everyone found us where they needed to work us.
This is Kurt's W6PH and my fourth year teaming up in the NEQP. It may qualify
as a "single-op" by the rules, but this is a
team effort. Kurt did the driving and I did the operating. We had a great
time as usual.
Route:
This year's route is the very same path we took in 2013. As we do every year,
we started at Kurt's QTH in Amherst NH
(HILNH). We continued east across southern New Hampshire and picked up RT 95
in Maine up to Lewiston. From there, we
turned back towards the sea coast and picked up RT 1 to activate the coastal
counties northeast of Portland. Our overnight
stop was in Bangor. Sunday morning, we got about a 30 minute head start,
continuing up RT95, towards Aroostook county. We
activated AROME from a small corner of the county on RT 157. We then turned
west to travel through the large northern
counties until we crossed into northern NH (COONH). We then turned south on RT
115 to pick up RT3 and 93 to return home.
Mobile Station:
We added a third antenna mount this year on the roof of the vehicle thanks to
Hank W6SX sending out his massive mag mount.
Thanks Hank!
2008 Honda CRV
Elecraft K3, 100 watts, powered from car battery
Logging with two newer laptops with sufficient internal battery power for the
duration of the contest (regarged Saturday
night)
Two Hustler MO-2 54-inch masts mounted on hatchback door secured by a homebrew
roof rack harness
One Hustler MO-4 22-inch mast mounted on W6SX mag mount, guyed to roof rack
just to add a little more security
Hustler RM-model resonators and DX Engineering Capacity Hats for 80 through 15
Meters.
We made the mag mount the "primary" antenna mount, so we planned to
have the 20 meter antenna on that mount during the day
and switched in the 40 Meter antenna during the evening hours (including the
last 90 minutes of the day Sunday). We then
used the rear antenna masts to support immediate band changes to
"secondary" bands. I considered not using the rear masts at all and
splitting the resonators off the mag mount mast, but I was concerned about
securing a top-heavy assembly properly for highway speeds as I didn't have much
time to test the week before the contest. I elected to keep it simple and use
one resonator per mast.
Contest:
Contest activity on Saturday started off better than it has in recent years.
Having three antenna mounts meant I could keep
a 20 Meter antenna connected the whole evening, so I was able to take advantage
of going back to 20 in each county. I ended
up making QSOs on 20 in every hour of the contest.
We had one issue on Sunday morning just as we crossed the county line into
AROME. A 12V ERR message appeared on the K3
display and suddenly the 100-watt amplifier either failed or went into BYPASS,
so we were only putting out 10 watts off the
main RF board. As a rule, I bring a backup piece of equipment for everything
we use in the operation and fortunately, I
have a second K3, so I just swapped in the second K3 and kept going. There was
an immediate pileup when we crossed the
county line - sorry to everyone in there for disappearing on you! The pileup
never quite came back when I got back on the
air. I'll investigate what's wrong with the first K3 later this week - the
unit is an early model and there are a couple
possibilites I know of.
Every time we went to 15 to check propagation we had a pipeline to TX, some FL
and later in the mid-afternoon Sunday to CA. As usual, 20 and 40 were the
money bands. In past years, I would make an effort to go to 40 throughout the
day to get some closer-in guys in the northeast, but there was very little
activity this year. Several moves to 40 resulted in very little rate.
It's always fun during the last few hours of the contest on Sunday as activity
picks up. The county change pileups become a lot of fun.
Thanks again to everyone who gets on for this one, especially the dedicated
group of DX stations that followed us around!
Stateside, the most QSOs goes to W4CB(W2RU) with 43, followed by K1GQ(38)
WN1GIV(32) K5LH(30) N4PN(29) K9NW(26) NF4A(25) K9UIY(24) W6SX(22) and K1QO(20)
and many more repeats. For DX, UA3AGW led the way with 22 QSOs followed by
LY5W(15) and SM5DJZ and DL6KVA at 11 each along with many other repeat DX
callers.
52 St/Provs and 26 DX entities worked. Missed DE (DEQP?), KH6, WY (despite
looking hard in 7QP), KL7, NF, LB, NB, PEI, AB and the VE territories. Best DX
contact was with RZ0AF.
454 distinct callsigns were worked this weekend.
The weather was nice aside from a couple minor rain showers. No interesting
wildlife seen. Still a some snow in north-
central Maine south of Baxter State Park, but just small patches in the woods
here and there.
Ratesheet with County Changes
CW+PH/Mul by hour and band
Hour 80m 40m 20m 15m 10m Total Cumm OffTime
CTYS
D1-2000Z - 14/6 77/33 - - 91/39 91/39
HILNH,
ROCNH
D1-2100Z - - 65/7 1/0 - 66/7 157/46
ROCNH,
STRNH, YORME
D1-2200Z - 37/4 39/7 - - 76/11 233/57
YORME,
CUMME
D1-2300Z - 36/2 33/0 - - 69/2 302/59
CUMME,
ANDME
D2-0000Z --+-- 52/0 10/2 --+-- --+-- 62/2 364/61
ANDME,
SAGME, LINME
D2-0100Z 15/1 51/1 22/1 - - 88/3 452/64
LINME,
KNOME
D2-0200Z 16/0 58/2 10/0 - - 84/2 536/66
KNOME,
WALME
D2-0300Z 37/0 27/1 7/0 - - 71/1 607/67
WALME,
HANME
D2-0400Z 19/0 11/0 6/0 - - 36/0 643/67 6
HANME,
PENME
D2-0500Z - - - - - 0/0 643/67 60
D2-0600Z - - - - - 0/0 643/67 60
D2-0700Z - - - - - 0/0 643/67 60
D2-0800Z --+-- --+-- --+-- --+-- --+-- 0/0 643/67 60
D2-0900Z - - - - - 0/0 643/67 60
D2-1000Z - - - - - 0/0 643/67 60
D2-1100Z - - - - - 0/0 643/67 60
D2-1200Z - - - - - 0/0 643/67 60
D2-1300Z - 10/0 45/1 - - 55/1 698/68 1
PENME,
AROME
D2-1400Z - 1/0 56/2 2/0 - 59/2 757/70
AROME,
PENME
D2-1500Z - 3/0 49/1 6/0 - 58/1 815/71
PENME,
PISME
D2-1600Z --+-- 2/0 53/1 7/0 --+-- 62/1 877/72
PISME,
SOMME
D2-1700Z - - 63/0 14/1 - 77/1 954/73
SOMME,
WALME, KENME
D2-1800Z - 15/0 62/1 3/0 - 80/1 1034/74
FRAME
D2-1900Z - 4/0 52/0 1/0 - 57/0 1091/74
FRAME,
OXFME
D2-2000Z - 16/0 46/0 19/2 - 81/2 1172/76
OXFME,
COONH
D2-2100Z - 27/0 56/1 - - 83/1 1255/77
COONH,
GRANH
D2-2200Z - 51/0 45/0 - - 96/0 1351/77
GRANH,
BELNH, MERNH
D2-2300Z 5/0 58/0 29/1 - - 92/1 1443/78
MERNH,
HILNH
Total: 92/1 473/16 825/58 53/3 0/0
73,
Bob and Kurt
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