[3830] N9JF/P Illinois QSO Party (story)

[jim funk]

        The Illinois QSO Party is unique in several respects.  It a) lasts 
only 8 hours; b) falls on Sunday afternoon and evening; c) allows multiple 
credit for both points and mults for county-line/county-corner station 
contacts; and d) provides additional mults for each 8 Q's with a single 
county in Illinois.  These features lead one to the following conclusions: a)
operate this contest and keep the family happy; b)find a corner; c) don't 
even *think* about trying to get a logging program to score your log!

        For the second year in a row, I operated from the 3-county corner of 
Adams/Brown/Pike in west-central Illinois. If you look at a map, you'll 
notice that the road to this spot is not marked.  There *is* no road.  The 
spot is 3/4 mile from *any* road.  Access is by 4WD vehicle over dry dams 
and a grassy field to a pleasant, tree-shaded, briar-and-poison-ivy-covered, 
wasp-infested tangle of rusty woven-wire property fences that converge at 
the county corner.  To satisfy (to me) the requirements for being "in" all 
three counties simultaneously, I erected a dipole with one end in Adams, one 
in Pike and its feedline in Brown.  I hope the purists agree.

        The antenna went up on Saturday, since I had a pessimistic view of 
my ability to throw projectiles into tall trees and didn't want to wait 
until Sunday afternoon.  My expectations were well-founded; two hours were 
required to successfully get the dipole up a whopping thirty feet, and I am 
now well-acquainted with string burns.  At least it was *up*....  I also 
custom-made (I didn't say it was fancy...) a base to utilize my old Hustler 
mobile bumper-mount as an elevated vertical and installed it near my 
operating position.  The ground was so hard that even the 
"pour-water-push-post" technique was marginally successful for getting 
ground rods into the earth.  I left just before dark, hoping that the hordes 
of frisking deer wouldn't tear down the dipole and the radials by Sunday.

        N9XEO and WB9EWM were to join me on Sunday and provide a generator.
Unfortunately, they were delayed in leaving Quincy and arrived five minutes 
after the contest began!  It took about 45 minutes to set up the generator 
and their two stations (VHF and phone, and different calls) and get on the 
air.  Beginning one hour into an 8-hour contest is not a time-honored 
strategy for winning; but hey, this is a "can we do this or not?" activity, 
and we were finally "doing it"!  I had decided to concentrate on cw since 
WB9EWM is strictly a phone man, and we wanted to provide the triple mult on 
both modes.  The first few contacts on 20 included a DL and an HA, making me 
think that getting the allowed five DXCC countries would be a snap.  Wrong.  
No other DX called the entire day.

        This party finds a great deal of the activity on 40 meters rather 
early in the afternoon, since in-state contacts and mults are allowed.  I 
ventured to 20 several times and even 15 (coaxed by N6MU), but 40 was the 
"money band".  Both antennas played well.  I had nice pile-ups and had no 
difficulty in being heard when calling CQing stations.  The presence of 
large numbers of ARCI contesters was a nice bonus; they were good about 
calling in and including their power, to which I faithfully added "100W" to 
my exchange.
I'd estimate that 20% of the Q's were with ARCI guys, many of them running 
1-5 watts.  The generator was far enough away that I had no trouble hearing 
even the *really* weak ones.  If you called and I didn't hear you, I'd like 
to know about it!

        Just about sunset, 40 went long and activity dropped, so I went to 
80 cw for the first time.  It also got COLD!  I simultaneously added coats 
and worked the pileup.  John and Andy had begun to tear down their stations, 
as the demand for Adams/Brown/Pike on VHF and SSB had never been very 
exciting and was now nil.  Twenty-two minutes and 39 stations into the run, 
the generator died!  AAAAAUGH!  No amount of tinkering could revive it, so 
we packed up (not an easy task...try tearing down your Field Day site in the 
dark sometime...) and made our way out of the boonies.  My apologies to 
KA8DDZ; I know your state, but I didn't *copy* it as the lights went out....

        The final tally (scoring this thing takes me awhile):
173 cw q's, 9 phone, 80 mults for 85,200 points in a hair over 5 hours.

        Thanks for the Q's and 73, Jim N9JF

Caution: Dates on the calendar are closer than they appear.



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