[3830] LaQP KU5B Rover LP

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                    Louisiana QSO Party

Call: KU5B
Operator(s): KU5B, W5JSJ
Station: KU5B

Class: Rover LP
QTH: 
Operating Time (hrs): 10

Summary:
 Band  CW Qs  Ph Qs  CW Mults  Ph Mults
----------------------------------------
  160:                              
   80:    2              2          
   40:   68             21          
   20:  164     38      26        22
   15:   11              4          
   10:                              
    6:                              
    2:                              
----------------------------------------
Total:  245     38      53        22  Total Score = 81,000

Club: Central Texas DX and Contest Club

Comments:

Well, that was a very interesting and fun weekend!

I bought a new car in April last year and really got excited about having HF
mobile after going out with Chuck, NO5W and Gary, W5ZL in OKQP. Hurricane Ike
threw me a curve ball as a tree conveniently placed itself on top of it...I got
the car back around the middle of January. Long story short, I knew I had a lot
of work to do before LAQP. 

Since the contest (sorry, QSO Party) happens the day before my birthday (21,
legal...finally!), I talked to my dad about the possibility of driving me
around for 12 hours and, surprisingly, said yes. I got with Chuck a couple of
times throughout the next month and he was a great help. My Winkey has never
acted right, and luckily he had a spare to lend me. We went over a couple of
the features of his software and I soon had a route all planned and input into
CQ/X (absolutely fantastic piece of logging software, BTW). I decked the car
out with lots of geeky things and bought a 102" whip and auto tuner which
helped tremendously. I must admit, the only time I'd actually checked to see if
I was getting out at all was chatting with a couple of ZL's on 40m one morning.
Other than that, I'd never transmitted from the car.

Friday morning, I woke up to a laptop that would not boot the OS...I simply got
a blinking cursor in the upper left hand corner. Great. After hitting it
(important), unplugging it, and taking the battery out I finally got it
working. We left Houston at around 3pm and arrived in Center, TX about 6pm. We
checked into the Best Western (fine accommodations) and ventured out to the
local WalMart for some fine wine.

On Saturday morning we loaded the car and headed to the border; about a 30
minute trip. Condx in the morning were pretty tough competing with the PACC
contest and occasionally WPX, but we stopped for lunch around 12:30 and by the
time we were back on the road, things seemed much better. It rained most of the
afternoon but that didn't seem to affect my hearing ability much. Really the
only time I had a big amount of trouble hearing was in Concordia Parish. The
QRN was 10/S9 at times and never got better despite moving around. I was very
happy to heard 15 open a little bit...I recall working N6MU, K9NW, and even
VE1WT there; nice surprise.

The trip was very uneventful. We only missed one turn and even then, Streets
and Trips sorted us out quickly. My dad went through his entire PY music
selection on his iPod and then got to the 70's channel on XM. I had Bose noise
canceling headphones on, so I didn't hear a thing except the radio. We found
ourselves running ahead of schedule as I though we would, so we decided to add
Cameron Parish toward the end of the route. 

Thanks to everyone for the Q's. This may not be one of the big QSO Parties, but
having a good group "ride" along made it very enjoyable. We hit 18 Parishes and
even made an appearance in SSB Sprint on 20m for a couple of minutes. Special
thanks to the following that made up more than 50% of my entire QSO total:

K9NW(30), N6MU(28), KO1U(18), NT2A(16), W2CVW(13), KB9OWD(11), W3BBO(11),
W5ESE(10), W0GXQ(8)

I probably should have spent more time on 40 but never seemed to get a whole
lot of response. WPX really made things difficult Saturday night. I also think
that 15 may have been open more than I thought but I was glad to get anything
there compared to last year's 1 Q on 15. 

Thanks to my dad for putting up with my radio habit (addiction is probably a
better word) and for driving me around. We logged 607 miles and didn't get
pulled over once...I'd say it was a very successful trip. Now, someone needs to
fix the condx!

I'll be back next year for sure...and will try to focus on the northern part of
the state. The OKie Mobile Team will be back as NO5W, W5ZL, and I team up once
again in OKQP later in March this year.

2007 Suzuki SX4
Little Tarheel II mounted on the hatch
FT-100D
CQ/X de NO5W ver 1.7

We took a couple of pictures and I will post them to my site in a few days
(http://ku5b.com).

73,
Colin, KU5B
Stacy, W5JSJ


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