[3830] WiQP WI9WI SO Mobile LP

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                    Wisconsin QSO Party

Call: WI9WI
Operator(s): WI9WI
Station: WI9WI

Class: SO Mobile LP
QTH: 6 counties
Operating Time (hrs): 

Summary:
 Band  CW Qs  Ph Qs
--------------------
  160:    0     0
   80:    0     0
   40:  261     0
   20:  124     0
   15:    0     0
   10:    0     0
    6:    0     0
    2:    0     0
  UHF:    0     0
--------------------
Total:  385     0  Mults = 60  Total Score = 72,300.0

Club: Four Lakes ARC

Comments:

As Roseann Rosannadanna said: "It's always something"

This was my 19th consecutive year as a mobile in WiQP. In my never ending quest
to operate from all 72 counties in WiQP, I put 5 more new ones in the books:
Vernon, Crawford, Richland, Grant, and Iowa. I also operated from Sauk which I
had done before.

There have been problems both minor and major the past 4 years. In 2009 the
contest went fine, but I hit a deer on my way back to our cabin in Sawyer Co.
after finishing the contest in Burnett Co. and had heavy damage to my Outback.
The next day I had a thermostat failure unrelated to the deer while driving
back to Madison and lost 4 hours getting it replaced in Ladysmith. In 2010
everything was fine until with 20 minutes left my computer had a battery
failure. Last year when I started, I hit F1 at 1800Z and had an infinite SWR.
That was easily fixed with a coax swap, but then about 2 hours into the contest
I had my RV battery fail and had to hook up the power to the vehicle battery
which took about 30 minutes due to lack of suitable tools.

Things started out on the wrong foot this year before I even got out of the
house. I left about 15 minutes later than planned and then when I was about
halfway between Middleton and Cross Plains on my way to Vernon Co I realized I
had left my headset on my operating desk. This meant no phone, and using the
speaker in the radio, no tragedy. When I got to Richland Center I saw a
Wal-Mart, popped in and bought a $10 stereo headset. It worked great, but cost
me another 15 minutes, so I arrived in Vernon Co. about 5 minutes late. I found
a great location just inside the Co line on a hill on Drake Rd and hooked up the
coax and power. I hit the power switch on the K-3 and...... nothing. I had
bought a new AGM battery and a battery booster last fall. I had run a mock up
on Thursday and everything was fine. I figured the problem was the booster so I
took it out of line and everything worked fine, though I was now limited to
about 60 watts output to avoid pulling the supply voltage to the K-3 below 11
volts. My first QSO was at 1819 with K9KR, WiQP Contest Director Lynn. After
about 40 minutes in Vernon I drove down Drake Rd about a mile and was in
Crawford a couple of minutes later. I then went back into Richland on top of
the hill just off Hwy 14. The first station I heard was W0ZQ/JAC, a rare
county. I hit F4 and ...nothing. I hit F4 again.... and nothing. The paddle
didn't key the radio either. I spent the next almost 40 minutes trying to
figure out the problem. I rebooted the radio, MicroHam keyer and computer about
3 times each. I swapped in my spare W9XT keyer. After tearing my hair out, I
checked the keying line from the keyer to the radio with a VOM and discovered
the ground was fine but the center conductor was broken. I'm not sure how this
happened, but I didn't have a spare, and I had no way of fixing it, so I hooked
up the paddles to the K-3, programmed  a CQ into the K-3 memory and ran the rest
of the afternoon hand keying everything but the CQ. I was in a slightly awkward
position sitting sideways in the back seat due to the short length of the
keying line from the paddles to the radio. I apologize for the occasionally
sloppy CW and not signing as often as I usually do. Then it was on to Muscoda
and Grant Co. from the DNR boat landing on the Wisconsin River and then onward
to Iowa Co. just down the road a couple of miles at another boat landing. I
then was going to go to the Green-Lafayette county line area about an hour
away, but due to time lost I bagged that idea and went to Sauk on the way back
to Madison.

Stats
County  t(min)40  20  Total

VER       40  36  23   59
CRA       37  39  29   68
RIC       41  44  33   77
GRA       42  47  17   64
IOW       37  45  24   69
SAU       46  53   8   61

Actual operating tome was 4 hrs 3 min. Rate was 96/hr while operating.

Last week I put everything back together, battery, radio, battery booster, etc,
and found the problem with the battery booster was a poorly installed Anderson
Power pole on the radio side. It wouldn't lock into the Rig-Runner and would
loosen up after a few minutes. I replaced it, and now it is fine. This was a
manufacturing defect. Whoever put the power pole on did it improperly.

Thanks for all the contacts.

Jim


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