[3830] TxQP K5NA Multi-Op Mobile LP

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                    Texas QSO Party

Call: K5NA
Operator(s): K5OT, W5ZL
Station: K5NA

Class: Multi-Op Mobile LP
QTH: Texas
Operating Time (hrs): 18

Summary:
 Band  CW Qs  Ph Qs  Dig Qs
----------------------------
  160:                   
   80:    33             
   40:   945   172       
   20:  1628   189       
   15:    11             
   10:                   
    6:                   
    2:                   
  UHF:                   
----------------------------
Total:  2617   361      0  Mults = 185  Total Score = 1,629,505

Club: Central Texas DX and Contest Club

Comments:

The Driving Burrito Brothers (minus the usual Sister) once again went forth and
multiplied in this year's Texas QSO Party, passing out nearly 3,000 Q's in 40
Texas counties. Down to a mere TWO stations for the first time (as opposed to
the usual multi-three), the K5NA BurritoMobile was captained  by Richard K5NA
who masterfully guided the BM through miles and miles of Texas (991, to be
exact) under some iffy driving conditions. Larry K5OT deftly manned the 40/15
meter station (a K3) from the middle seat, and Gary W5ZL literally brought up
the rear of the Tahoe with another K3 on 20 (80 after dark Saturday night).
Susan K5DU, our driver in past Burritospeditions, opted to stay home and post a
big score in the CQWW RTTY contest, hence Richard's taking the wheel. While it
would have been nice to have had full-time coverage on 15, the band opened only
infrequently and was once again largely unproductive. As you can appreciate,
there's a lot of RF floating around with three 100 watt stations and closely
spaced mobile whips in a single SUV, and interstation interference can be
fearsome. With just two radios and Richard's superb engineering - multiple
bandpass filters and coaxial stubs - the situation was much more manageable
this year.

As noted by many others, conditions this year were dramatically improved, and
thanks to Chuck NO5W's tireless efforts to recruit Texas players - especially
mobiles - the 2010 TQP was one for the record books. Other state QSO parties
(ahem, CA, take note) would do well to take a page out of Chuck's playbook.
Boys, it's all about the mobiles. At last count, we had 30 of them
criss-crossing the state. Several even came from as far away as California to
be rovers in the TQP. How cool is that?! At an average dwell time of 30 minutes
per county that's a lot going on for one state, and lots of radio candy for the
out-of-state and DX players. 

Pileups this year were simply overwhelming with almost zero white space. Though
we stuck primarily to CW, whenever rates sagged (especially in larger counties),
we hit SSB for a few Q's. George K2UR wins the Top Tamale Award for most Q's
with the Burritos - a whopping 64 in 36 counties. Other heavy hitters were:

KB9OWD (46/35)
KV8Q (39/33)
W5CT (37/29)
N4JF (36/29)
WA3HAE (36/30)
WA6KHK (36/30)
VE3KZ (35/30)
K0DEQ (35/29)
K4AMC (34/25)
K5LH (34/33)
WB2ABD (33/27)
N5LZ (31/29)

Thanks to many others for being there seemingly every new county, including
NT2A, W4UCZ, K3TW/4 (QRP), K7ZD, NR5M, N1LN, K8QWY, N4CD, KI2G, W8TM, K9YC,
W5SL, N8II, N9CK, N5AW/0 - each of whom made at least 25 Q's with the
BurritoMobile.

Dietmar, DL3DXX ran away with DX honors, working K5NA/M an amazing 30 times.
Richard K5NA and Gary W5ZL met Dietmar in person at WRTC Moscow in July -
really nice to finally meet this incredible operator!

Combined 20/40 meter rates were excellent, especially in the early minutes
after each county change. Looking at the highest hourly rates for the first ten
minute periods in each county, SPAT and JWEL were the highest at 408 QSO's per
hour. All told, we had first ten minute rates of 300 Q's per hour or higher in
19 of the 40 counties activated. Thanks to all the great ops out there for
letting these two OT's overdose on TQP pileup adrenaline! 

A lot of folks have asked about the BurritoMobile radio/antenna complement. As
noted, we used K3's this year, and they provided a soft ride through the crush
of signals. We had a mix of W3NQN, ICE and Dunestar bandpass filters, sometimes
two in series to combat interstation interference, which was largely
non-existent on 40 and tolerable on 20. As usual, we used a full-sized Tarheel
screwdriver antenna on 40 (rear left-mounted), a 20 meter Ham Stick on a mag
mount on the hood, a 15 meter Ham Stick on another mag mount on the top of the
vehicle, and a Little Tarheel on a Diamond lip mount (passenger side front
door) for 80 meters. All antennas performed flawlessly throughout the trip.

This year we adopted NO5W's phenomenal CQ/X GPS-assisted logging software.
Uncharacteristically for most software support these days, Chuck made a day
trip to Austin from Houston several days before TQP to help us get the program
set up and debugged. I guess he can afford to do that with the hefty licensing
fees he charges (it's F-R-E-E!!!). Chuck says he figures he'll lose a little on
every installation but make it up in volume. Proving once again that Murphy is
our constant companion with logging computers, everything worked perfectly
before the contest, but we were barely out the door Saturday morning when
Larry's GPS failed to send positioning data to his computer, defeating many of
the benefits of the CQ/X software. Undaunted, Richard provided clear cues to
Larry for upcoming count changes and with a couple of keystrokes to manually
change counties nobody at the other end was the wiser. Post-contest failure
analysis revealed a broken cigarette lighter plug that didn't provide power to
the GPS, apparently not covered under the CQ/X warranty! Gary's 20 meter
station, GPS and all, worked quite nicely, aside from a few operator-induced
errors.

CQ/X also provides for remote operation of the K3 if the mobile installation
calls for it. This is a slick GUI, optionally a full-up visual simulation of
the K3's front panel, or a reduced sized version with just the key buttons
visible. Both stations also used a ShuttlePro II, a third party programmable
USB Human Interface Device (overgrown mouse) which worked very nicely to
provide remote control for RIT, bandwidth, CW speeds, etc. 
without having to touch the radio. We've got more work to do to perfect the
integration of the ShuttlePro and the K3-CQ/X combination, but it's quite
promising.

So another Texas QSO Party is in the history books. Though we missed being
stopped by the Texas Highway Patrol again this year, we made up for it with TWO
separate border patrol stops as we skirted the Texas-Mexico border Sunday
morning. The Customs/Immigration agents were friendly and each time let us pass
after a brief explanation of why we had all those antennas on the car. (I guess
three old nerds doesn't garner much suspicion even WITH all those antennas).
For the Burritos, we again enjoyed watching Texas go by out the window as we
re-encountered so many of our old friends and picked up a few new ones along
the way. Pretty hard to have this much fun with your clothes on, but we did!
Huge thanks to Chuck without whom this would be just another ho-hum state QSO
party, to all the mobiles for doing their thing, and everybody else who showed
up to play.

Note: the 1.6M point total is a Burrito all-time high, and includes 43,500
bonus points.


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