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[3830] FlQP NO5W M/SCW LP

To: 3830@contesting.com
Subject: [3830] FlQP NO5W M/SCW LP
From: webform@b4h.net
Reply-to: no5w.chuck@gmail.com
Date: Tue, 02 May 2017 06:42:41 +0000
List-post: <3830@contesting.com">mailto:3830@contesting.com>
Florida QSO Party

Call: NO5W
Operator(s): KN5O NO5W
Station: NO5W

Class: M/SCW LP
QTH: LA
Operating Time (hrs): 20

Summary:
 Band  CW Qs  Ph Qs
--------------------
   40:   364     
   20:  1728     
   15:           
   10:           
--------------------
Total:  2092    0  CW Mults = 60  Ph Mults = 0  Total Score = 502,080

Club: LA Contest Club

Comments:

K3/100, HI-Q 4/80, Dell D610 logging, Sony Vaio Navigation, both running CQ/X
1.8.0.13, and Streets and Trips 2013, Garmin GPS 18PC and Pharos GPS
receivers.

After all was said and done, Sunday night dinner in Spanish Fort was complete,
logs and computers put away, and the drive home in the rain was over, it was
another awesome FQP mobile experience. But this one reminded me of when I
thought I would become a golfer. Out to play a round the front-side scorecard
would be littered with bogeys, doube-bogeys and worse with nary a par and
thoughts would be present of the sticks going in a garage sale at the next
opportunity. But the greens fee had been paid so what the heck we'd try the
second nine and wouldn't you know somehow there would be a few pars and maybe
even a birdie. Forget the garage sale, that's all it would take to bring us
back for more of the same the next week.

As many have commented the Saturday front-side was the pits in the 2017 FQP
with 
propagation poor and the level of participation seeming to be way down. For us
that resulted in a mid-party Q count of only 771 and the discouraging prospect
of ending up with about 1500 Qs, well below our Q count from the past several
years, if we found more of the same on Sunday. It was downright embarrassing to
have to report our meagre results to the AD4ES and K4OJ crews gathered at the
NX4N pizza feed Saturday night. Fortunately the crews sitting around the pizza
and the key lime pie were kind and only flinched a little when we announced our
771. The pizza as well as the key lime pie was excellent and the hospitality 
of Chris and Lilli is much appreciated. It's good to know that, after a long
day on the FQP road with minimum lunch, you can find a good place to have a
pizza and trade some good FQP tales. In addition to the pizza and the key lime
we got a tour of the very well-appointed AD4ES mobile van before departing for
the hotel.

We were definitely discouraged when we retired for the night with the prospect
of a long drive on Sunday. But hey, our dues had been paid as we were already
out two nights of lodging and were in the Tampa area needing to get back to
southeast Louisiana so we thought we might as well do a little radio on the
drive home using our planned Sunday route. Sunday started a bit slow in Sumter
but the rate picked up with each new county and by the time we reached Escambia
and the Florida-Alabama state line on I-10 we were having a ball living on the
edge of chaos trying to handle the big pile ups in Escambia, Gadsden, Suwanee,

Baker, and others and the way home found us happy with the additional 1321 Qs
we had picked up on Sunday and thinking about strategies to improve our results
for next year. 

One thing we will try to improve on next year is our Saturday route. Our Sunday
route seems to play well but Saturday found us bogged down in Polk county and
after missing a couple of turns in Lakeland due to traffic we had burned up
enough time in Polk that we had to skip Lee, our most southern county, by
taking a short cut to I-75 through Charlotte. I-75 was a welcome sight by that
time as the traffic was really moving along that stretch from Port Charlotte up
to the Sunshine Skyway Bridge. Even though I couldn't convince the toll booth
lady to give me a senior rate or one for being in the FQP the bridge provided a
beautiful night time view of the bay area. A quick run up to Lutz and NX4N via
SR60 found us sitting down to the pizza less than ten minutes after the closing
bell.  

Here are some stats from our FQP adventure across 43 counties including some
that show the difference between Saturday and Sunday. In the following the
county results are ordered by decreasing values in the Rate column. In this
table Rate is the initial ten-minute rate on entry into the county and is a
proxy for the size of the pileup greeting us. The column labeled First is, 
of course, the first station in the log in that county. It should be pointed
out that some of our 40+ dupes have not been removed from the following so the
Qs will not add up to the values reported above. 

County       Qs Rate First    Day
Escambia     55 252  K7IA     Sunday
Gadsden      75 222  K5OT     Sunday
Suwannee     65 216  AA0AW    Sunday
Baker        47 210  W8WVU    Sunday
Union        47 204  AA3B     Sunday
Leon         55 204  W8WVU    Sunday
Walton       60 204  N9CK     Sunday
Madison      66 204  W8PI     Sunday
Bay          58 198  AE1T     Sunday
Hamilton     72 198  W8WVU    Sunday
Liberty      41 192  K5OT     Sunday
Columbia     64 192  K0HC     Sunday
Holmes       72 192  IZ3NVR   Sunday
Jackson      72 192  K9UIY    Sunday
Okaloosa     48 186  KG5EE    Sunday
Manatee      55 174  K1GQ     Saturday
Calhoun      72 174  K7QA     Sunday
Charlotte    35 162  AA3B     Saturday
Hillsborough 62 156  KU8E     Saturday
Washington   66 156  WI9WI    Sunday
Gilchrist    34 150  N2ZN     Saturday
DeSoto       38 150  WB5JID   Saturday
Pinellas     45 150  KE4CQ    Saturday
Santa Rosa   44 138  AA7V     Sunday
Wakulla      48 138  W8WVU    Saturday
Hardee       39 132  WB5JID   Saturday
Hernando     49 132  NS9I     Saturday
Franklin     28 120  WA3HAE   Saturday
Dixie        29 120  K3WW     Saturday
Putnam       29 120  W4NZ     Sunday
Pasco        43 120  K8QKY    Saturday
Alachua      24 114  NE9U     Sunday
Sarasota     61 114  AB1J     Saturday
Polk         72 114  K9CT     Saturday
Jefferson   106 114  N9RV     Saturday+Sunday
Lafayette    29 108  NE9U     Saturday
Clay         20 102  VA7ST    Sunday
Citrus       31 102  VA3FV    Saturday
Levy         38  96  W5FOC    Saturday
Sumter       18  84  WN4AFP   Sunday
Taylor       26  84  K0HC     Saturday
Bradford     57  60  K9CT     Sunday
Marion       35  54  VA3DF    Sunday

With Sunday occupying the top sixteen slots it is clear that the pileup
activity was more intense on Sunday. With 40m coming to life on Saturday
evening the pileups in Manatee, Charlotte, and Hillsborough added a glimmer of
hope for activity picking up on Sunday. The slow start on Sunday is clear from
the rates for Marion, Bradford, and Sumter which were Sunday morning counties.
The highest rate counties Escambia, Gadsden, and Suwannee were all afternoon. 

During the FQP we worked 362 unique calls and appreciate the QSOs from each.
But special mention goes to the 43 stations who contributed more than half of
our QSOs: K3WW(47), N9CK(45), VE3KZ(42), K9CT(40), K9OM(39), K8IR(38),
VA3DF(38), NE9U(36), W2RR(34), WA3HAE(31), K0HC(30), K9CW(29), K3WJV(29),
WI9WI(29), K0RC(28), W8WVU(28), WJ9B(25), K5GA(25), W8PI(24), K7SV(24),
VE3UTT(23), NS9I(23), K0TI(23), VE9AA(23), VE3OM(21), NW0M(20), W5TM(20),
W1QK(20), W9OA(20), N2AN(19), N8II(19), W1FJ(17), NQ5K(16), W1WEF(16),
N7IR(15), W1TO(15), VE3CX(15), VE3BR(14), K7IA(14), K0VXU(13), N5NA(13),
N8BJQ(13), and I4VEQ(13).

In past FQPs multipliers have been our scoring weak spot and 2017 was no
different with only 60 mults being captured. No stations were worked from AK,
ND, NE, SD, or UT. The Canadians were well represented by AB, BC, MB, NB, ON,
PE, and QC with the big VE turnout coming from ON -- thanks for the great
support from VE3. Conditions did not support many DX contacts and we only
managed to work HA, HH, I, JA, KP4, OK, SP, and TG, but there were some good
signals in there especially from stations worked in I, OK, and SP.

The pileups were large but for the most part well-behaved, standing by once it
was clear we were responding to a given station. We certainly appreciated that
behavior and I'm sure others in the pile did also. For some of the larger
pileups it became necessary to attempt to spread the pileup out time-wise by
using different TU messages sometimes short and sometimes long but always with
a goal of identifying our call and county every 3-4 QSOs. 

Apologies for any failures to meet that goal.    

It's always fun to have an eye-ball QSO with another mobile during FQP and this
year, in addition to the AD4ES and K4OJ crews at the pizza party, we had an
opportunity for a short QSO with Tom-K4ZGB who walked up while we were pumping
gas in one of the panhandle counties. We also had a near eyeball QSO and a real
40m one with Wayne and Marty of the N4FP team who pulled up and parked up the
street from us as we were leaving our Clay County stop and run location in
Keystone Heights. We had bumped into Wayne and Marty while pumping gas in
Marion County a few FQPs ago.   

Finally many thanks to all those who participated in the 2017 FQP and to those
behind the scenes people that check the logs, cheerlead, write the reports,
procure and mail the plaques and all the other things that it takes to have a
QSO party as successful as the FQP has been during its 20 years. Here's to 20
more.

Hope to be back again next year.

73 es OJ

Chuck-NO5W
Ted-KN5O


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