[3830] K1TO/4 FL QSO Party - last 3 hours

[K1to]

After a very successful and fun series of mobile and portable 
operations with WD4AHZ and AE4MH, two of the most active Sarasota 
contesters, I operated the last 3 hours from home.  What a blast!!  
Clearly, our goal of resurrecting the FQP was met, despite what many 
pointed out were lousy condx.  

It was a scant 7 months ago that I made an impassioned speech at a Florida
Contest Group meeting about sponsoring the FQP.  Thanks to a hard-working
bunch of us, my vision was realized!!  Based on the very early exit polls, the
onslaught of e-mail from K4OJ had a significant positive impact!

After listening briefly on 15 and hearing essentially nothing, 
started at 21Z on 20 SSB (rules state to do SSB on the hour, CW on
the half hour).  Started by answering WA3HAE's CQ.  It appears that 
Keith will take the top spot for out-of-staters, even with his 
low-power station!  Then, it was off to find a spot to call CQ...

My 20M beam is fixed towards Europe and I did not take the time to 
rotate it back towards the states.  This turned out to be beneficial 
as many Europeans, plus A61AJ, called in!  No sign of LY3BA 
who had been calling "CQ FL" earlier in the day.

Even with liberal amounts of ragchewing, 80 QSOs were in the log in 
the first half hour!  Time for 20 CW.  Another instant pileup, but a 
20-over-S9 tuner-upper showed up, too.  He'd go key down for 5 seconds 
after each time I signed my call.  Ignored him and worked guys at a
slightly reduced rate through him.  

Try 15 and work only an ESP-level K8MR in a few minutes.  MR and K5OY
eventually find me 4 times in the 3 hours I'm on.  Still, the first hour ends
with 130 in the log.  Whew!  And this is a state QSO party?!  

Tried all the bands and modes for a while and found very little activity on 
80.  Perhaps it was better the first night which ran 4 hours later.  15 was 
apparently much better earlier in the day, although we had limited success
on our portable and mobile missions. 

Should we run a unique analysis on these logs, mine will undoubtedly 
show up with a high percentage of uniques.  Many who called in were
clearly not active FQPers!

Very pleasantly surprised to work a ton of mobile stations in other
states.  K3EE was kind enough to call in from the NJ Turnpike and 
again from the Deleware Memorial Bridge to give me the DE multiplier!

The core group from outside Florida seemed to be the "mid-tier"
contesters, but I was impressed by how many of the bigger guns 
stopped in to give us a few QSOs, too!  Found out later that many 
of us Floridians were spotted on packet - VFB!

It's too early to tell yet whether we met our goal of activating all
67 Florida counties, but it's real close.  Keith ('HAE) had a total
multiplier of 114 and worked 64 of the 67 counties himself.  I had suspected
that there would be a few who would manage to catch all 67 and 
qualify for the coveted "orange broom", but no such luck (this year!),
unless there is a dark horse out there!

More on the mobile and portable stuff later...

73, Dan, K1TO/4


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