Oklahoma QSO Party - 2021
Call: WB0TEV
Operator(s): WB0TEV
Station: WB0TEV
Class: Mobile AssistedSSB LP
QTH: OK
Operating Time (hrs): 5:36
Summary:
Band CW Qs Ph Qs Dig Qs
----------------------------
160:
80:
40: 54
20: 255
15:
10:
6:
----------------------------
Total: 0 309 0 Mults = 48 Total Score = 37,664
Club: DFW Contest Group
Comments:
While I’m a regular participant as a mobile SSB only op in the Texas QSO
party, I’d only done the OKQP once before, in 2014.
This year I recruited my friend Scott Davis (K5PS) as a CW op and together we
spent Saturday only motoring across SE OK taking turns on the radio; he as a CW
only entry using his call and me doing SSB only under my call. We targeted 20
counties but had to forgo McCurtain at the end (which was a somewhat iffy late
addition anyway).
Prior to the contest I went to the special needs page of the countyhunterweb.org
website to see who might need any of the counties we planned to activate and
sent emails to a number of them giving them a heads up. That apparently paid
some dividends in sparking interest not just in us, but in the OKQP in general.
The weather Saturday was perfect for going mobile. Earlier in the week, rain
had been forecast for Saturday, but as the weekend approached the rain got
pushed until after midnight. Temps were in the 60’s and 70’s with generally
cloudy skies. The clouds are nice in that they cut down on the glare on the
laptop screen, although we did have it shrouded in a hood made from a small
cardboard box.
We were almost constantly on the move. I drove and operated SSB, while K5PS
rode shotgun and logged for both of us (switching between separate databases in
N1MM+). I had a small netbook zip tied down to a 16 inch x 16 inch plastic
pegboard to which my bencher paddles were also attached. Scott had that
pegboard sitting on his lap pretty much the whole trip.
The radio was on old Yaesu FT-757GXII with a special USB CAT cable going to the
netbook laptop. The antenna was a short Hustler mobile vertical with heavy duty
spring with a 40m and 20m resonator bolted to a triple mag mount on the roof of
my 2008 Chevy Tahoe LS. Between the radio and antenna I had an MFJ 949D Deluxe
Versa Tuner II strapped atop the center console cubby with a bungie cord.
Whenever we’d change bands/modes, K5PS would readjust the tuner to get a
proper match since short vertical antennas have very narrow natural bandwidth.
Three strips of copper braid made from the shield of some old RG-8 coax ran from
the ground connections of the radio, tuner and USB connector on the laptop to a
single point ground bolt by the gas pedal. I’d learned earlier that the strap
to the laptop was necessary to keep RF from upsetting the USB port.
Saturday morning we set out from Greenville Texas and crossed the Red River into
Bryan County about 30 minutes before the start of the contest. At the starting
bell, K5PS went to work on 20 CW and OM2VL (who I’d emailed the day before)
was sitting there waiting and was the first one in the log. Both Scott and I
would work Laci several times on CW and SSB respectively.
It was off the races as we motored up Hwy 78 past Durant crossing into Johnson
county just long enough to put some QSOs in the log for JOH before heading back
through BRY on HWY 199 across Lake Texoma in Marshall county, getting delayed
somewhat by construction on the bridge there. Passing Madill we then drove down
thru Lebanon, OK and into Love County on Hwy 32. Then it was north on Hwy 77
(avoiding I-35 for the moment) and up into Carter county where we took I-35
north to US70 which took us west into the northeast corner of Jefferson county
passing through the booming metropolis of Ringling (named after John Ringling,
founder of the Ringling Brothers Circus).
As our foray thru Jefferson County was but a few miles long I stopped just short
of the Stephens county line and let K5PS work a big CW pile. I then moved onto
the county line itself and did a county line run on SSB so as to knock out both
counties quickly.
The Jefferson/Stephens county line run was incredible. A huge pileup ensued
which I worked down as quickly as I could as we were already falling behind
schedule. Sorry to those I couldn’t pull out at the end, but we had to keep
moving if we were going to activate all the counties on our dance card.
BTW, a big thanks to OKQP head honcho Connie Marshall (K5CM) for making a rule
change to further incentivize mobiles to activate as many counties as practical.
The old rule for a mobile to earn a bonus for county activation was to make at
least 5 QSOs on 80 and/or 15m which given current propagation just isn’t
practical. Instead, this year mobiles were offered 500 bonus points for making
at least 10 QSOs in each new county activated. I managed to do that in all but
3 of the 19 counties we did, falling short in Johnson, McClain, and Pushmataha.
After catching the very SE corner of Stephens, it was back east thru Carter
county then onto I-35 into Murray county through the Arbuckle hills and into
Garvin county where we stopped in Pauls Valley to refuel the Tahoe and grab some
fast food.
As we were getting ready to hit the road again, Murphy struck. The computer
interface stopped working, the radio seemed to have lost its mind, and the
paddles wouldn’t cause any CW to come out. After several minutes in a Walmart
parking lot down on my knees to reach the two buttons on the back of an FT-757
that you need to push to reset its microprocessor, a reboot of N1MM+, and a
power cycling of the computer, we got it all working again, but the time we’d
hoped to make up by taking a shorter lunch than planned had evaporated… and
then some.
Heading up highway 133 we caught the short little SE tongue of McClain county to
the little town of Byars (there are a lot of little towns in Oklahoma!) then
north on Railroad Bridge Road so as to cross the Canadian River into
Pottawatomie County and the town of Wanette.
The bridge across the river is a story in itself. I’d first crossed it back in
2014 when I discovered that it is a single lane bridge only about 10 feet wide!
It’s held up by a big iron truss over the top and going through it is like
driving through a leaky Faraday cage. Back in 2014 there was a traffic signal
on each end of the bridge to signal to each entrance whether it was there turn
to cross but that signal was gone in 2021 so you just have to take a long (~800
feet) look down the bridge and go when it looks clear. As we crossed we could
see a number of folks in dune buggies tooling around on the mud flats below.
That was the furthest north we would go as we turned east on Hwy 39 across
Pottawatomie County and into Seminole. Next it was south down US377 to re-cross
the Canadian River towards Ada in Pontotoc County.
At around 2245Z we entered Coal County which was apparently in relatively high
demand. I pulled off to the side of the road and let K5PS do a nice CW run
while I took a break from driving to take a bio break and hop into the back of
the Tahoe and eat the Subway sandwich from Pauls Valley that I’d stashed in my
cooler.
Turning north on US 75 we crossed into Hughes county around 2310Z, turning east
on US270 to head towards McAlester in Pittsburg county and the Indian Nation
Turnpike.
Somewhere along the turnpike we had another Murphy visitation. As Scott was
QSYing from 20m to 40m he couldn’t match the antenna on 40m. The SWR stayed
way up no matter how the knobs got twisted on the tuner. I pulled over to help
diagnose, but no joy. Bypassing the tuner and sweeping across the 40m band I
couldn’t find a resonance dip anywhere and I feared that the 40m coil had
died. I pulled the 80m resonator out of the back of the Tahoe thinking we might
have to forgo 40m and use 80m for the rest of the trip, but then in one final
test I noticed the problem.
When the radio was keyed it would switch itself from 40m to 20m. Our eyes had
been fixed on the tuner’s VSWR meter and hadn’t noticed that at first.
Looking further, the rig wasn’t in split mode, nor was N1MM+ but I did notice
that the RIT indicator on the N1MM+ bandmap was red. Clicking on it turned it
black and the radio stayed on 40m when keyed. It all loaded up properly again
and we got back on the road, but we lost more time that we would need if we were
to make it to McCurtain county. A look at the clock and our time plan showed
that a foray to McCurtain just wasn’t going to work so that plan was
abandoned.
Heading south we left Pittsburg County and caught just the 5 mile stretch of
Atoka county that pokes out to the east near Daisy OK. We pulled off the
highway and parked to spend enough time to try and bag at least 10 QSOs each to
get the county bonus. K5PS was successful, but I struggled. The sun was
setting, 40 was mediocre and 20m was dying. After several minutes of fruitless
CQ’s and some desperate search and pounce where I worked some stations in the
Idaho QSO party, I got the 10th Atoka county SSB QSO, threw the Tahoe into gear
and headed down the road and into Pushmataha county.
Even though we were in PUS for a good while, I didn’t make 10 QSO’s in that
county. Maybe I should have accepted K5PS’s offer to relinquish the radio
earlier but he was making money as they say, while the SSB crowd was falling
off.
By this time we were in the final hour and were both relieved that we weren’t
going over to McCurtain. We were both pretty spent by this point and the
thought of running down county roads in the dark and getting even further from
home was not at all appealing. After exiting the turnpike at Hugo, OK I pulled
into a church parking lot and we each gave it our final effort. After I
finished working all I could on 40m I swapped out the 40m coil for the 80m one,
spotted myself on 3857 kHz and called to no avail. I offered Scott a chance to
try 3536 on CW but his eyes had glazed over so we called it a night and headed
for home, which thankfully was only about 75 minutes away at that point.
FWIW, here’s a recap of county by county SSB QSO totals and times for WB0TEV.
K5PS did better on CW, but these QSO Parties are more CW events anyway,
especially for mobiles.
County Time 40m Qs 20m Qs
BRY(1) 1525 1 0
JOH 1525-1541 1 8
BRY(2) 1546-1556 14
1632-1633 4
MAR 1653-1706 30
LOV 1707-1712 18
1733 1
CAR (1) 1735-1752 9 15
JEF/STE 1831-1842 27+27
CAR(2) 1925-1937 3 10
MUR 1938-1943 10
GRV 2051-2102 1 11
MCL 2118-2126 1
POT 2142-2153 19
SEM 2154-2159 15
PON 2234-2243 17
COA 2244-2250 16
HUG 2323-2336 3 10
PIT 2338-2353 12 4
ATO 0024-0036 7 3
PUS 0102-0105 5
CHO 0129-0200 12
Made at least 10 QSOs in 16 counties for 8,000 bonus points.
N1MM+ shows my total on time as 5h36m, just about half the 11 hour Saturday
contest period.
Mults:
DX: OM, EA
US: missed IA,ND,SD,AL,LA,AK,HI,IL,WI
VE: worked AB,BC,ON,SK
OK: only MUS!
Frequently worked stations (5 or more QSOs):
K7SEN-8, K9RS-7, KA4RRU-5, KA6BIM-8, KI6RRN-13, KK7AC-7, N2QVY-8, N8II-5,
OM2VL-11, VE5KS-8, VE7CV-5, W4SIG-6, W9DC-5, WA1SAY-7, WA3QNT-11, WY0A-5
Many thanks to K5PS for providing the CW and logging for us both!
A big thanks to Connie K5CM and the OK sponsors for their many years of
organizing and promoting the Oklahoma QSO Party. I hope to be back next year.
Look for me (and possibly K5PS too) in the Texas QSO party in September.
If you read this whole thing, I hope you got your money’s worth!
See you in the WPX.
73,
Victor – WB0TEV
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