Solar Eclipse QSO Party
Call: K1LT
Operator(s): K1LT
Station: K1LT
Class: SOAB LP
QTH: EM66dx
Operating Time (hrs): 3
Summary:
Band CW Qs Ph Qs Dig Qs Grids
-----------------------------------
160:
80:
40: 118 0 0 66
20:
15:
10:
6:
-----------------------------------
Total: 118 0 0 66 Total Score = 5,874
Club: Mad River Radio Club
Comments:
For the Great American Eclipse 2017 and the Solar Eclipse QSO Party,
I traveled with Bill, WD8AMX and my daughter, Sunni, to Cerulean,
Kentucky, EM66dx (transmitted EM66cw, see below). Bill and I
started planning this trip more than a year ago. We found an
acceptably priced hotel room in Clarksville, TN about 44 (normal)
minutes away from eclipse ground zero (point of "greatest eclipse"),
latitude 36.9664° N, longitude 87.6709° W. Then we arbitrarily
picked a "public viewing area" in the Amish community outside of
Hopkinsville, KY (Eclipseville, USA per their web site) which turned
out to be 1200 meters from the point of greatest eclipse. This was
the first happy accident.
Originally, the trip was exclusively for total eclipse viewing.
When the SEQP was announced, we added the ham radio content.
The Saturday before the eclipse I manufactured a full sized 40 meter
vertical. I already have a full sized "portable" 40 meter vertical
that I use for Field Day, but that one is based on a 10-foot wooden
4x4 and 12-foot lengths of tubing. The "new" antenna used 6 5-foot
military surplus aluminum mast sections and associated accessory
hardware (tilt base, insulator, guy ring, etc.). These parts have
been kicking around my barn since my ARES days in the 80s and 90s.
I made 13 34-foot radials out of "obsolete" 18-gauge Beverage wire
and a do-hickey to fit my battery powered drill to wind up the
radial wires. The final specialized part was a 3-inch square of
copper clad G10 with 4 5-position screw terminals to which to attach
the radials. I completed the ensemble with a 100-foot piece of RG8.
The antenna parts and mast sections, K3 and old HP laptop (with
serial port), 2 folding chairs and a shade canopy all fit in the
back of the Prius with enough room for the kid to spread out in the
back seat.
Saturday evening I perused the Writelog reflector to catch the
latest wisdom about configuring the logging program for the SEQP. I
also looked up the grid square we planned to visit and came up with
EM66cw, which is cool because of the "cw".
Since there were dire predictions of traffic apocalypse we departed
Carroll, Ohio at 7am Sunday morning for the nominal 7 hour trip to
Clarksville. The entire trip to Clarksville was uneventful with
light traffic everywhere except the last mile in Clarksville which
had minor congestion (normal congestion, per the hotel check-in
lady).
Once checked in, we elected to visit the Cerulean site and explore
potential traffic issues. We found the site on Cornelius Road
without much difficulty and talked to the proprietor. Erecting an
antenna did not seem to be an issue. Then we cruised through
Hopkinsville to see how many people might be there. Hopkinsville is
a town of 35,000 people, and the center of town had been made over
into a town festival. We didn't see 200,000 people so we had no
worries of traffic apocalypse.
Sunday evening Bill and I visited the "Twisted Kilt" (hard to spell
that word without digits) for some food and a beer. I resisted
lecturing the ladies about callsigns.
Eclipse day, Monday morning we left the hotel at 7am and arrived at
the Cornelius road site before 8am. See saw only light (but speedy)
traffic. It took about 30 minutes to get checked in and then we
picked a location at the edge of the designated area so that our
antenna would be out of the way of other people. The proprietor
said they expected about 1500 cars.
The weather forecast called for a heat index of 103 degrees. When
we erected the sun shade canopy we could not find the central hub
that bind the spindly frame tubes. After some improvising we
managed to put up about 6 square feet of shading hang from the hatch
on the back of the car. The 40-meter vertical went together easily
and greatly impressed our visitors who were also impressed by our
mission to investigate low-frequency propagation during an eclipse.
The ambiance of the whole site reminded me of what Woodstock or
Burning Man must be like without the nudity. I have never been to
either of those events.
I didn't bring a table. But the cooler with plenty of ice water and
cold pop made a great stand for the K3 and the plastic box that had
transported the K3 made a great stand for the circa 2003 Compaq
laptop (with serial port!). The vertical exhibited an SWR of 1.4:1
on the first attempt, so no further effort was made to tweak the
antenna although Bill periodically straightened the radials that
people were determined to wade through.
Operation commenced at 1421Z. The first three contacts were quite
difficult with extremely weak signals even though the other stations
reported 579. After the third contact, I switched the RX antenna
from "Beverage" to "main" which helped immensely. I forgot
to bring
an external keyboard, so finding all of the Writelog "rapid entry"
keys on the laptop keyboard added to the thrill.
I used Writelog and the "HF grid square" contest module. I typed
the sent and received RSTs into the "name" field with a slash
separating the two fields. After some fumbling I configured the
message macros with different RSTs so I could send semi-accurate
signal reports (569-599) with only the 10 message buttons. Most of
the time I forgot to look at the s-meter when someone called me.
Several people stopped by to observe the operation. One guy was
curious about how Morse code worked these days, so I showed him the
laptop keyboard nut I also dug the Bencher paddle out of the car and
plugged that into the K3. He was very impressed by the "2-way"
motion of the paddle versus the 1-way movement of a straight key. I
made a contact for him using the paddle. After that I used the
paddle for several contacts and I was amazed that I could actually
make myself understood.
When the eclipse began I began to look for signs of anomalous
propagation. Contacts came from only the EM/EN and FM/FN grids.
Nearby stations were particularly weak, probably because a vertical
makes a lousy NVIS antenna. Signals generally seemed weaker as the
day aged.
At 1534Z I worked N7S in DN72. He was CQing and came back easily.
I heard him a couple more times while tuning.
At 1743Z W6YX called me with a no-QSB 579 signal. I didn't hear him
again after that. About 10 minutes later, I heard 2 7-land stations
exchange DM grid squares. I heard another 7 (call already
forgotten, no pencil or paper for notes) CQing, but he didn't answer
my calls. The 3 7s were heard over about 2 minutes and then there
was no further DX.
After the anomalous propagation, the eclipse started to get
interesting. The light was noticeably weaker, and oppressive heat
diminished and the breeze picked up slightly. Of course the people
around me started to get excited and that was infectious.
Totality was awesome.
It was both night and day at the same time. The solar corona was
plainly visible. We saw the diamond ring but no Bailey's beads. A
big 4-engine jet flew by at a relatively low altitude just at
totality. He was probably at 10,000 feet judging from his apparent
size. This desccription is utterly inadequate to describe the
experience. You just have to be there.
After totality ended, my enthusiasm for the radio stuff was greatly
attenuated. I made a few more contacts including the zippity NO3M.
My last contact was at 1833Z for a total of 118 QSOs.
Many people started to leave a few minutes after totality. We hung
around until after C4 (the very end of the entire event). Then we
took down the vertical and packed it up while sipping cold Cokes.
We exchanged greetings and email addresses with our neighbors and
departed the Cornelius road site around 3:30 pm local time, about an
hour after the end of the event. There were few cars to be seen at
that time. We promptly got lost on the back roads and both
smart-phones were being problematic about navigation. Ultimately we
circumnavigated Hopkinsville and congratulated ourselves on escaping
without traffic issues.
Once we reached the Western Kentucky Parkway, traffic apocalypse
began. The return trip was city rush-hour style traffic for 11
hours. The big bottle neck was all traffic exiting western Kentucky
heading northeast had to fit onto a single tightly curving on-ramp
to I-65 in a major construction zone. But slowdowns continued until
we reached Ohio. We stopped at a rest area next to the Miami River
bridge at 4:30am. The stop was packed with travelers. When we
resumed the trip we still had on more 40 minute delay waiting for a
repaving project near Wilmington on I-71. The trip that took 6.5
hours on Sunday (1 hour removed from Clarksville) took 14 hours on
Monday. We arrived back at my house at 6:30 am after traveling all
night. I have never before traveled by car non-stop for 11 hours.
Sunni slept almost all night in the car. She has already 3 14-hour
drives to Cape Cod this year to help with attending to my recently
widowed mother. Nevertheless, she found the return trip exceedingly
painful.
Bill took a brief nap to while Columbus rush hour elapsed before his
own drive home.
After my own 2-hour nap, I typed this report while slowing unpacking
the car. Apparently, we were really in EM66dx, not EM66cw. The
"dx" would have been even more cool than "cw". Oh well.
I hope I generated useful data for the HAMsci people. I had fun
doing a "real" Field Day, especially at the event of the century (so
far). I found the anomalous propagation I hoped to observe.
The score is raw with no bonuses. I thought about making a QSO during totality
but that proved to be a completely ridiculous idea. Note again that I
transmitted EM66cw although we were actually in EM66dx.
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.3830scores.com/
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