[3830] TxQP W0BH/M Multi-Op Mobile LP

Wed Oct 6 19:13:21 PDT 2010

                    Texas QSO Party

Call: W0BH/M
Operator(s): W0BH N6MU
Station: W0BH/M

Class: Multi-Op Mobile LP
QTH: 39 TX counties
Operating Time (hrs): 17.5

Summary:
 Band  CW Qs  Ph Qs  Dig Qs
----------------------------
  160:                   
   80:    45     0       
   40:   544   111       
   20:  1279   246       
   15:     3     0       
   10:                   
    6:                   
    2:                   
  UHF:                   
----------------------------
Total:  1871   357      0  Mults = 131  Total Score = 868,837

Club: 

Comments:

Score includes 39000 bonus points for counties activated, and 1000 bonus points
for 5 counties each from N9JF/m and N4CD/m.

We operated with one radio.

---------------------------

For the past number of years during mobile QSO party runs in TX, OK, NE, MO, WV
and KS, I've enjoyed the company of John, N6MU .. not in person, but in my
headset and in my log.  Many, many times in my log.  This year, my favorite
driver/XYL Lorna, knew she would be unavailable the weekend of the TQP, so when
I saw plane fares plummet between Los Angeles and Wichita, I gave John a call to
see if he might be interested in running a multi-op with me.  Apparently he was
.. he had a ticket in hand that same day!  Besides previous TQP mobiling
experience, John also does mobile VHF contesting, so I looked forward to
meeting him in person and adding new ideas to w0bh/m.

John arrived in Wichita along with a big thunderstorm on Thursday evening, but
the storm cleared out and beatiful weather was forecast for the weekend.  I
missed the TQP as a mobile in 2009 because of the Centennial Celebration at
Hesston College, but the Panhandle route I ran in 2008 worked well and was
already in the GPS.  At John's suggestion, we added four additional counties to
bring our county total to 39.  Texas Panhandle roads are in excellent shape and
we put them to good use as you'll see shortly.  Thursday evening was spent
practicing with NA logging software, looking over the route, and of course with
my favorite 30 minutes in ham radio, NS (the NCCC Sprint).

Friday was a teaching day for me at Hesston College. John relaxed on our farm
and did some more practicing until I was able to get away at 3:00.  Once I got
home, we put the antennas on the van, loaded up, and headed off at 5:00 ..
right on schedule.  For those of you who read my KSQP 3830 writeup, you'll
remember that Lorna hit all 39 counties in Kansas within a minute or two of our
posted time.  Could we do it again?  At least we started off right!

Note: If you read my KSQP post, the next two paragraphs are similar.

Folks often ask how my van is set up, so let me go into a bit more detail than
usual.  The Astro van, now with with 275,000 miles on the ticker, ran the same
equipment as the last number of QSO parties: Icom 706MkIIG with remote mounted
head, Logikey K-4 keyer, MFJ travel paddles (one for John and one for me), MFJ
voice keyer, three Hustler vertical sets on triple mag-mounts (20SSB/40SSB/10,
20CW/40CW/15 and 80CW), two Dell laptops, Lind DC-DC converters for both
laptops, NA software for logging, keying and rig control, DeLorme GPS and
Street Atlas software for navigation, and a Heil noise-cancelling headset.

The Icom radio, GPS computer and FM car radio interface (so the driver can
listen in) are powered by the van battery. Everything else is powered by a big
deep-cycle marine battery which runs the logging computer, keyers, and level
converter the full 12 hours.  A second identical battery is along for Sunday or
for a jump start in case we stay too long at a county line (the jump start has
happened on more than one occasion!). An external 12v fan blows air
continuously on the radio.  I do have a tuner installed but rarely use it.  All
antennas are tuned for my operating frequencies to eliminate lag time when
switching bands or modes. In my equipment box, I carry an extra Logikey keyer,
inverter, configured logging computer, 20m and 40m antennas and masts, and an
Icom 7000 with another microphone and headset. In the past ten QSO parties I've
run mobile, I've had to swap ALL of these items out at one time or another!

A great way to test out the setup before QSO parties is to run counties enroute
to our destination.  Many of the same ops who are regulars in my QSO party logs
are avid county hunters, so it's fun to give them some counties while checking
everything out.  While John got used to the Astro van, the miles flew by as I
put out a number of relatively rare southwestern Kansas counties and let
everyone know what we were up to that weekend.  We rolled into Guymon, Oklahoma
on schedule at 10:15pm, about 20 miles from the Texas border and 60 miles from
kick-off.

Saturday

Saturday did NOT dawn sunny and clear.  Texas received a fair amount of rain
from the storms that hit Kansas, so we woke up to a warm fog.  We started out
on schedule with what we thought was plenty of time to get to the first
two-county line, but the fog really slowed us down at first.  About the time we
crossed into Texas, the fog lifted just a bit and huge wind generators appeared
out of the mist.  We arrived at the Hansford / Hutchinson county line with 10
minutes to spare, but found power lines, so we spent 5 minutes finding a better
spot. At 1400Z we were on the air with our first CQ on 40m, and K5KS found us
one CQ later.

The first number of counties, I ran the radios and John drove and listened to
get a feel for the operation.  It stayed overcast for awhile which made seeing
the computers easy, but we eventually drove out of the clouds into a beautiful
Texas morning. Rates started out good and got better as more folks turned on
their rigs and found the airways alive with Texas counties.  It was great to
have John yelling out calls in pileups (he does yell!), and it's interesting
which calls we each pick out.  Often we got the same call because the op had
enough experience to go slightly high or low from the masses, but sometimes we
got two completely different calls and put both to good use.

Two hours in, we pulled into our first and only 4-county line and John was
ready to go on SSB. I stayed on the logging computer and watched the rate climb
300 .. 400 .. 500 .. 600 and higher.  At one point I showed John the rate
because it broke my all-time rate record, but he was too busy to look so I
won't report it because I still can hardly believe it!  Somewhere in there I
switched to CW and we overstayed our time of course, hoping the good Texas
roads would let us make up time.  They did.  Smooth roads, almost no traffic
and light winds got us back on schedule after another couple of counties.

By now John was busy on CW and enjoying his first county line pileup.  CW rates
were so good and we were travelling through most counties so fast, that we
sometimes had no time left over for CQing on SSB.  Extra time was often spent
searching for TX multipliers.  We still didn't do enough of that, although we
found many more than I did in 2008.  We did keep checking 15m as promised and
the band was open on Saturday afternoon, but we never got an answer to our CQs.
 Even with the GPS, we missed a couple of turns, and I bounced the van through a
dip which flopped both laptop lids closed and made a noise I'd never heard the
Astro make before.  Luckily everything stayed running including the Astro and
we were able to get back on course and schedule by the time we got close to our
last county for the day.  As we headed north, we were treated to a huge
thunderstorm cloud off in the distance, reflecting the last rays of the sun. 
We almost didn't try 80m thinking it would be noisy, and it was .. but not with
QRN! Signals everywhere from everywhere.

What a day!  We finished up Saturday with 1475 Qs in the log and it felt good
to unwind as we drove 60 more miles to Plainview for our overnight stop. 
Earlier, we found out that Jim, N9JF would also be running TQP mobile, so with
luck he planned to stay at the same place John and I were staying.  We got in
shortly after 10:00 and found N9JF/m just two doors down from us and still
awake.  We weren't hungry enough to go out to eat, so we arranged for breakfast
the next morning.

Sunday

Sunday morning came all too quickly, but a big breakfast with Jim got us going.
Both John and I really enjoyed meeting another excellent op we've both worked
many times.  We headed out to our first 3-county line on schedule, arriving
there about 10 minutes ahead of time only to find that the line shown on the
GPS was on someone's farm.  Harvest was in full swing, too, with one truck
after another driving by.  Without time to get to know the farmer, we settled
on a 2-county line start about 4 minutes late after some unsuccessful detours.

Six hour Sundays in Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas go way too fast, and this
Sunday was no exception.  Lots of action again and we were actually ahead of
schedule at times which helped when we missed another turn by 5 miles!  "How
does that happen with GPS?" you might ask, but it's just too much fun to listen
to pileups!

Driving was actually mostly uneventful which is what we hope for, but we did
have our moments.  I'd been suggesting to John to slow down a bit after dark
because of deer.  Seeing the huge buck flash by within touching distance of our
window made a believer out of him!  I also looked up from the logging computer
after a sudden swerve to find that John had either narrowly missed or squashed
a tarantula.  We didn't go back to check.  We also were lucky to not get behind
too many slow vehicles, but the horse trailer with a strange substance pouring
out the back bumper made up for it.  Note to self: leave the windshield wipers
off next time and add a clothes pin to the equipment bag!

We were once again right on schedule as we rolled into our final 2-county line
stop.  I saved CW for last, and everyone needed both counties so the action was
fast and furious.  I found myself forgetting to send the second county sometimes
and know I missed sending it to N4CD.  Sorry, Bob!  John caught several others
but we both missed that one.  When the bell struck 3:00, we stopped to take a
few pictures, then headed back to Guymon for a late lunch.  The pizza and the
great memories kept us going for the five hour drive back home to Kansas.

Stats

We operated 17 hours 33 minutes, 2228 Qs, 409 unique calls, 9 dupes.

States not worked : DE HI MS SD
Canadian mults worked : NS ON MB
TX worked : 70 counties
DX worked : DL HA SP F LY OM LZ OE I HK G PA OK

Overall Rate

Six-hour Rates
Saturday .. 1400-1959 784 Qs = 131 Qs/hr 
Saturday .. 2000-0159 695 Qs = 116 Qs/hr 
Sunday .... 1400-1959 759 Qs = 127 Qs/hr 

Total W0BH : 2228 Qs 131 mults 39*1000+2*500 bonus = 868837

County Breakdown (in visited order)

Saturday (512 miles during the QSO party)
1  HANS  59
2  HUTC  47
3  OCHI  50
4  LIPS  32
5  HEMP 109
6  ROBE  96
7  WHEE  75
8  GRAY  96
9  CARS  41
10 ARMS  22
11 DONL  44
12 HALL  83
13 COLW  43
14 CHIL  63
15 COTT  55
16 HDMN  87
17 FOAR  43
18 WILB  52
19 BAYL  70
20 KNOX  58
21 KING  55
22 DICK  62
23 MOTL  60
24 FLOY  45
25 BRIS  26

Sunday (244 miles during the QSO party)
26 HALE  43
27 SWIS  46
28 CAST  48
29 LAMB  58
30 BAIL  26
31 PARM  62
32 DSMI  44
33 RAND  51
34 POTT  32
35 OLDH  82
36 HART  84
37 DALM  59
38 SHMN  72
39 MOOR  48

Special thanks to the following ops for 10 or (way) more contacts:

36 K4ZGB WB2ABD VE3KZ <- consistently loudest signal on Sunday
34 KV8Q W4UCZ
33 WA3HAE
32 WA6KHK <- consistently loudest signal on Saturday
31 NT2A
29 K9YC
28 K3TW/4 KB9OWD
27 K4AMC K8QWY
26 N8II
25 K4YT KI2G W5CT
23 K5LH
22 N1LN W8TM
20 DL3DXX N4AAI N4JF N9CK NT5O
19 K0DEQ NR5M W7GVE
17 KN4Y NA4K
16 N5LZ N5WR ND3R
15 K0PC N3UM
14 K4LTA K8MFO KD5JWC NO3M W0GXQ
13 K2RP W0MU
12 K4LQ K4MM K5KS K8MR KB8OMG KS4X N4JT N5HW N9AUG N9JF/M W6USN
11 K4XI K9DU K9EN KO7X N2MM N3RM N5AW/0 VE3KP W4AWF W4IHI W5RQ/P W9LHG
10 LZ5R N3RJ W5SL W8KNO 

Texas mobiles worked: N9JF/m N4CD/m W3DYA/m N5XG/m K5NA/m N5NA/m AD4EB/m
                      W2IK/m N5DO/m N3BB/m NS5J/m NO5W/m N5VR/m

W0BH Award Winners - First Place
---------------------------------------------------------------
Most overall Qs ---- K4ZGB and VE3KZ and WB2ABD 36/tie
Most CW Qs --------- VE3KZ and WB2ABD 36/tie
Most PH Qs --------- K3TW/4 and K4ZGB and N8II and WA5DTK 8/tie
Most counties ------ KV8Q and W4UCZ 34/tie
---------------------------------------------------------------

John and I drove a total of 1496 miles round trip from Kansas.  I'm sure you'll
see us team up again soon! Special thanks to Chuck (N05W) for coordinating the
event and keeping track of the mobile routes and counties and to NARS for
sponsoring the event.  The day we left, 30 mobiles and all 254 counties were
listed as being active .. a phenomenal accomplishment. I hope all 30 mobiles
can also find their way to the Oklahoma and Kansas QSO parties in 2011 as well.
See you all again next year!

73, Bob/w0bh and John/n6mu

The following was added by John:

The TxQP is my favorite state party. This was my third visit as a TX mobile.
The first was 2000 when Norm, W3DYA, chauffeured me using my call. I met a lot
of the great NARS folks on that trip. The second was 2003 when I was invited to
join the K5CWR/m multi-multi team that set a record that still stands. It was
time for another visit and Bob, W0BH, has been asking the last few years but I
couldn't make it. I now know why he does so well on his various trips. He has
really tuned his mobile to the max. It was a real pleasure to join him and
observe first hand what an excellent operator he is, especially how he handles
three and four county lines. Thanks again to Bob and Lorna for the hospitality
and another wonderful TX experience.

73 ... John, N6MU

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