Kansas QSO Party
Call: N0T
Operator(s): K0RU N0EI
Station: N0T
Class: Mobile MOST LP
QTH: Mobile
Operating Time (hrs): 15
Summary:
Band CW Qs Ph Qs Dig Qs
----------------------------
80: 1
40: 93 4
20: 178 85 4
15:
10:
6:
----------------------------
Total: 272 85 8 Mults = 47 Total Score = 47,570
Club: SFTARC - Santa Fe Trail Amateur Radio Club
Comments:
272x3=816
85x2=170
8x3=24
1010 x Mults(47) = 47470
Plus KS0KS Bonus Station of 100 points
Total Score - 47,570
At first we never thought we would get started, the battery in my car went dead
over night and I had to jump start it in the morning on Friday to go to work.
While at work, I was able to locate a battery that could be installed and had
it changed out. Swung by John-N0EI and picked him up and since we had time we
decided to get the oil changed in the car and swing by our favorite candy store
(Associated Radio) and pickup a few more antenna parts and just more stuff.
Finally we're on the road, with plans to meet K0BJ-Bruce in Colby KS for dinner
with him and his wife and son at Montana Mike's Steakhouse. Wonderful people
and of course fantastic steak dinner. We didn't have the SSB Mobile antenna's
installed we only had the 2m/70cm and Tarheel Screwdriver antenna installed, we
still had to get the hustler SSB antennas setup as a spider mount so we would
not have to constantly have to be screwing the screw driver from band to band
etc.
Saturday morning arrives and we get up at 6 am to begin installing antennas on
my car (K0RU car) and we begin to run into stumbling blocks, this is missing,
that is missing. Oh well, we work through with what we had and then we didn't
have a strong enough fishing line to tie down the antenna on the roof top of the
Buick so we decided we would swing by Walmart in Colby, KS and get some 50 lb
test line to tie down the antenna. Whoops, big mistake we left Bruce's place
and on the way to Walmart Rob is driving just alittle too fast due to
excitement I suppose and Pow, AIR BORN the 10-80 Hustler antenna spider
mag-mounts break loose and the entire antenna system goes air borne over the
trunk of the car and smashes to pieces on the ground. The magnetic mounts are
destroyed, but the mast and coils appeared to survive the disaster.
We get to Walmart and begin to piece together what we had, and as luck would
have it Rob - K0RU had an extra ball mount on the bumper of his car not being
used. Just the coax was really bad shape and had be cut. We decide to go to
the local truck stop and picked up some new 18 foot connector coax and away we
go, new coax, antenna mast installed on the bumper mount and we're on the
road.
We get to our first county line to run and its one thing after another. To
begin with the laptop has been setting on the dashboard pretty much the entire
morning and noon time and we can't get the keyboard to function properly on the
laptop everytime we would type the number 8 on the keyboard we would get the
forward slash symbol like this / as you can imagine we would work W8XYZ and it
would log W/XYZ well that's not going to work, we tried this and that rebooted
the computer several times (thanks to the stations who QRX and waited for us to
get the stupid laptop working), but we had a spare laptop and spare keyboard so
we were able to get the laptop working with the spare keyboard but that just
became a clumsy mess with extra stuff on John's lap to try anything to log
with. We decide to bring up the backup laptop and try all over to get something
going to log with, this extra laptop is a ACER NOTE, anyone knowing computers
can realize this thing is the tiny of tiny laptops to be using, but its all we
had, and fired it up and of course as luck would have it, the stupid power
connector on that laptop begins to act goofy and the battery would charge and
not charge, charge and not charge and the battery was going down, down and
down... Ugh! We decided to go back to the original laptop plan and dug it out
of the back seat and as luck would have it, that laptop now had enough time to
cool down and the keyboard on the laptop began working perfectly. WhaLA! We
are finally on the air, logging and station after station. The pileups were
just nuts, where did all these stations come from. In the past KS QSO Parties
we have run, we've never had this large of pileups on the first day and
especially not on the first call out of the air at our first county line. It
was station after station, I'm in the driver seat (K0RU-Rob) and I'm telling
John, sorry buddy, but we have to get rolling here. If we keep this up we're
never going to get through many counties, we have to get rolling. John agrees
and we sacrifice the pileup to begin running stations on the roll. I hit the
peddle to the metal, climb to 85 MPH, all APRS on 2 Meters is running, the
K0RU-9 cellphone APRS is running and many stations were watching our APRS
beacon live and they knew exactly when we would cross from one county to the
next, we at times were hitting QSO Rates of 120 Q's and that's me at the
paddles driving the Buick at 85 MPH and John logging station, after station. It
was such a blast. (speed limit in western KS is 75, so we weren't breaking the
speed limits that badly).
Thanks to all the stations that called, we had a wonderful time and we sure
look forward to doing it again next year.
Special thanks to K0BJ - Bruce and his wife Janice for the wonderful
hospitality that is what hamming is really all about, friendships and good
times.
73, until the next one. K0RU Rob and N0EI John
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