[3830] MnQP NE9U Mobile/Portable LP

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                    Minnesota QSO Party

Call: NE9U
Operator(s): NE9U
Station: NE9U

Class: Mobile/Portable LP
QTH: MN
Operating Time (hrs): 10

Summary:
 Band  CW-RTTY Qs  Ph Qs
-------------------------
  160:                
   80:     265        
   40:     396        
   20:     118        
   15:                
   10:                
    6:                
    2:                
-------------------------
Total:     779       0  Mults = 69  Total Score = 107,502

Club: Central Wisconsin Radio Amateurs

Comments:

Well, another fun 1000 mile trip is in the books!  We logged just under 500
miles during the contest and around 500 to get us there and back.

My usual partner, N9BCA is having some health issues, so I had to wire up my
Jeep Wednesday and Thursday night before the contest with power and antennas. 
The good news is I now have everything permanently set up so that I can be
mobile in 15 minutes in the future.  Late Thursday night after I had everything
wired up and gave it the smoke test, I didn't have any smoke, but I seemed to
have lots of problems!  My normally somewhat quiet installation had 40/9 noise
on all bands!  At first it seemed to be coming from my truck, then it seemed
like computer noise.  Then one time I keyed the radio and it instantly
disappeared! (but so did all signals!)  What the heck????  Now I had a dead
receiver and it was midnight.  Luckily I called N9BCA and he was still up and
said to come and get his TS850 that we usually use anyway (The dead radio was
my old IC751).  Anyway, I hooked the TS850 up and there was no noise.  (does
anyone know if a symptom of a dying receiver might include 40/9 hash
noise???...the only thing I remember doing is possibly keying up on the same
freq back in CW SS while experimenting with SO2R...maybe I fried the IC751's
front end).
Well, when I finally went to bed Thursday night around 2 am, my wife asked why
I spent two long frustrating evenings out in the freezing cold working on such
nonsense.  "Because it is fun", I said.  .  :-)))

I picked Paul, W0AIH up around 8 pm Friday night, so we didn't actually have
time to install monobanders or alphas in my Jeep.  We drove over to his
daughters house in Washington County and got a good nights sleep.  Saturday
morning, we decided to drive a few miles to the north and start out in Anoka. 
>From that point on, everything worked out pretty well.  We were able to hit 25
of our possible 29 counties (we didn't make it back to Chisago and skipped
Renville, Sherburne, and Isanti, as they were "time permitting" side
trips...and we were running out of time!)  We only got lost once in Wright
county on a side trip.  The trip got a little wild at that point on some bouncy
twisty back roads.  I've never been very good on amusement park rides and got a
little dizzy, but didn't mess up on my keyboard.  Luckily we made it back to
the main road just in the nick of time.

I hooked up one of those FM transmitters kids use on their MP3 players for Paul
to listen to on the FM car radio what was going on in my headphones.  That
worked out well and Paul frequently helped my decipher the huge pile-ups we
sometimes generated.  I think Paul enjoyed listening to a lot of his friends
calling in for qsos.

Our results ended up having the lowest qso count in my 4 years of mobiling, but
my highest multiplier count.  We tried to spend time in each county on all 3
bands (80/40/20).  We spent a lot more time on 80 than usual because there
seemed to be a lot of activity there.  I didn't think 20 sounded especially
bad, but there just didn't seem to be much action there.  I tried to visit that
band just to make sure some of the Ca, FL, and NY guys that were there had a
chance to get us and keep their interest in the contest.  (40 and 80 wouldn't
make the trip).

Anyway, this is our best score in 4 years of operating,  so I think me and Paul
had a successful trip...it sure was fun as usual!   I see some nice scores being
reported, so it will be interesting to see the rest!  See everyone next month in
the WQP!!!

Scott  NE9U and Paul W0AIH


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