[3830] KsQP K0A(W0BH) Mobile SO Mixed LP

Fri Aug 29 17:36:37 EDT 2014

                    Kansas QSO Party

Call: K0A
Operator(s): W0BH
Station: K0A

Class: Mobile SO Mixed LP
QTH: 36 counties
Operating Time (hrs): 14.7

Summary:
 Band  CW Qs  Ph Qs  Dig Qs
----------------------------
   80:     3     0       
   40:    39     2       
   20:   843   601       
   15:   176    28       
   10:     2     2       
    6:                   
    2:                   
----------------------------
Total:  1063   633      0  Mults = 52  Total Score = 231,660

Club: 

Comments:

The 2014 Kansas QSO Party by W0BH as K0A/m

Hot! That was the operative word this year. As the 2014 KSQP got closer to
kickoff, I kept looking for those cooler temps we had the week before (and now
the week after), but the weather reports kept saying 100+ temps. On Thursday
evening, I decided to switch operations from the perfectly radio-tuned Astro
van to the not-so-perfectly radio-tuned Mazda van with one major redeeming
grace - air conditioning!

It took about 5 hours to make the switch, and I finished up on Friday in the
cool(er) morning air. Somehow the IC-7000 and antennas worked. The only band
that didn't tune well was 10m SSB. One of these days I'll talk about the
"fun" of tuning up twin Hustler vertical triple stacks mounted close
together on a van top.  I couldn't get 15m to work (like it does on the Astro)
until I put 15m on a third mag mount normally used with 80CW. I tested CW, SSB,
headset, computer keying, computer logging, GPS navigation - all good.

Like last year, Aaron/n0qd drove Saturday and xyl Lorna/k0why drove Sunday.
This year, Aaron also operated W0T/m at times, and Lorna operated K0Y/m. They
often tagged my QSOs to give out those rarer letters, but I took a break from
operating on Saturday during a long county and drove for Aaron for awhile while
he put W0T/m on the air. 

Another last minute change was my route. I knew I'd be going west, but as the
other mobile routes came in, I saw that we could once again put all of the
counties on both CW and SSB if I picked up a number of far southwestern
counties on CW. I planned 23 western counties on Saturday and another 13
northern counties on Sunday, finally posting my route Thursday night. Our
last-to-post mobile sent me his route at about 11:30pm on Friday night, so I
got that on the web site with a big smile because we now had all the mobiles
and all the counties and all the 45 1x1 calls good to go. Couldn't do it
without you all!

Saturday

In order to get to far southwest Kansas and back to W0BH for the night, we
headed out at 7:30 am for the Reno/Stafford county line and the 9:00 am start.
The GPS said 71 miles. As we drove into Reno county on highway 50, we ran into
road repaving and single-lane traffic. Then we saw the first of 50 downed power
poles, the tall ones, some of which fell down on top of other local power and
telephone lines. A storm the previous night had blown the first one over and
that took the rest of them down. Luckily, they blew away from the road, but
there were at least 10 power trucks there getting ready to work on the lines.
Again, we made it through. Instead of starting at STA/REN, we started in REN on
40CW. After a number of CQs, N5DO, KO7X, and K2DSW appeared, then nothing for
the next two minutes. Where is everyone?  So I tried 20 and found VE9AA, N6MU,
and NT2A .. regulars we mobiles can't live without! We hit the REN/STA line at
the time I'd planned to leave it, so we were right on schedule. Game on!

After a nice CW run , I tried SSB for the first time. There was N6MU. How John
does that, I don't know, but he does it over and over again. Then I worked
N8II. Jeff told me my audio sounded like I was in a tunnel a long way off and I
started to have a sinking feeling that I'd forgotten something. I unplugged the
2nd mic that Aaron would use, and sure enough, no transmit audio using the
headset mic. I'd forgotten to swap out the correct mic adapter from the Astro,
and I had no spare. My Friday morning test worked because the hand mic sitting
on the seat was picking up my audio, not my headset mic! Did I really do that?
After digging through my audio box, I decided the noise-cancelling headset was
worth the pain of swapping a hand mic back and forth for the day. We'd be home
to fix the problem for Sunday, so that's what we did. It turned out to work
well with a bit of practice and we had lots of practice. This year, we gave out
Aaron's call on every SSB QSO unless there was a really big pileup with not much
time left in county.

This year we once again we used a Mobile CW Window well below Ohio QSO Party
frequencies.  Our fixed stations (and Ohio's) for the most part stayed out of
the Window, and everyone who took the time to check the Mobile Routes link on
the KSQP web site knew right where to look for each CW mobile. Band conditions
seemed off from last year with almost no 40m activity. On the bright side, the
DX activity from Europe was amazing on both 20 and 15. Last year's winner,
OM2VL, was missing (and missed!), but SP9LJD made up for it with a reported 96
Kansas counties worked. Last year I worked 3 DX countries, this year 17.

My favorite part about operating mid-west QSO parties is the county line
operations, something I really miss when going to states where line operations
aren't allowed. Because of the length of the route this time (638 miles on
Saturday), we couldn't schedule as many, but we did have one four-county line
I'd used before. This time we approached it from the west since we were on the
way back from Morton county, the furthest southwest county in Kansas. Not a
good idea. It looked fine on the GPS, but the two mile lead-in road was a
two-rut track with dry grass in the middle.  Aaron kept out of the ruts to
avoid setting a grass fire with the catalytic converter. At least it wasn't
muddy! We had to go down a draw and cross a dry creek, and on the way up, the
dirt road was literally cracked down the middle of the road. On TV, I'd just
seen that huge crack that opened up in Mexico ... :-)

We made it to the line. In fact, the line was on a good road and easy to get
to, just not the way we came in. As we used the GPS to find the exact spot, we
saw a pickup parked close to where we needed to go. Since it was the only
vehicle we'd seen in quite some time, we both thought that it might be another
mobile. But no, it was a farmer who just happened to be there working his
field.  We explained what we were up to and he left with a smile.

The Mazda has a circuit breaker that blows if I don't keep the engine running
while transmitting. It was at or over 100 degrees out, so we kept the A/C
running as well. Right in the middle of the 4-county run, the breaker tripped
anyway. I got out to reset it and realized how hot it was under the hood, so I
left the hood up and had no more problems. We had to leave the line way too
soon in order to make the rest of our route.

I also want to apologize for our computer crashes. It's not the logging
software, it's RF getting into the level converter. As long as I didn't
transmit SSB and Enter a QSO at the same time, all was well. But sometimes
while one-handing the mic or operating a line, I'd forget. Usually I got away
with it, but four times it crashed (twice on Saturday and twice on Sunday).
When that happens, I have to reboot and load a new blank log which takes about
30 seconds, or I have to rebuild the log which takes about five minutes. The
first two times I took the 30 second route but lost my call history which is
really important in marginal conditions. I rebuilt the log on Saturday evening
at home. This doesn't happen in the Astro, so I'll have to do some more
shielding and grounding before using the Mazda again. I normally don't lose any
contacts, but it's really annoying.

I usually have several logging computers loaded and ready, but this time I only
took one since my home station was loaned out to two more 1x1 ops. The computer
screen got loose, didn't want to stay up, and kept falling backwards when we
hit bumps. I had some blue masking tape which I used to tape the lid into
position, but it was paper and kept tearing as I tried to adjust the computer
screen angle to reduce glare. It was more funny than anything, but on Sunday I
swapped the masking tape out for duct tape and had no more problems. I know, I
know, get a new computer :-)

The day continued and we made it to highway 56 and the long run east. No
storms, but the south wind kept Aaron on his toes. We pulled into McPherson
(the county and the town) right on schedule and met Jerry/k5yaa and Colin/ku5b
for supper as we relived the day. Great fun and great company! We ended the day
with 1330 Qs in the combined log which I didn't know until I got home and
rebuilt it. I guessed wrong, Jerry .. sorry!

Sunday

Morning came all too quickly after a short night's sleep. It didn't take long
to install and (properly) test the correct headset adapter, and we were good to
go. I reworked my posted route slightly by starting out in Harvey county, then
drove straight to Butler county to sit on the BUT/MRN/HVY line. It was
definitely a new day. Good signals right from the start.

Lorna took a few minutes to get used to her "new" call. K0Y/m was
popular all day long and she did a great job tagging my SSB contacts while
navigating and driving. We stayed pretty much on schedule the entire ride.
Westbound on highway 24 in Cloud county, we saw Ron/ad0dx heading the other
way. Other than two more computer crashes, the run was just fun. The computer
lid no longer flopped, I had my headset boom mic back, lots of folks to talk
to, and it was cool inside the van! 20m did drop out at one point, but 15m
picked up the slack until it came back. Still almost no 40m activity.

When we hit I-70 south of Salina, we took the freeway west to the
Lincoln/Ellsworth county line. Lincoln was a new county for everyone, I think,
and I knew John/n6mu was getting close to the Sweep. He's usually right there
waiting for me when I cross a line and lots of ops were, but no John. I found
out later he heard me just fine, but signals to CA were really dropping off on
both 20 and 15 and he couldn't get through on SSB. I had a great SSB run at the
line while Lorna had a late lunch and took a well-deserved nap.  I switched to
CW with about 30 minutes to go. John finally got through for his 104th county,
then off he went to find 105. 

We finished the party with a combined Sunday count of 817, down from 1059 last
year, but very satisfying nonetheless.  We couldn't do it without you all
looking for us, fixed or mobile, so we can't say thank you enough. Thanks from
Lorna and Aaron as well. See you all again next year!

Stats

We operated 17.6 hours, 2147 combined Qs, 458 unique calls (up from 409 last
year) 2 dupes, one radio.

States not worked ----- : RI VT AK NE 

VE not worked ---------- : NS QC BC NT NU YT PE NL
KS worked (9 counties) - : SUM SHA JOH JEF THO HVY REN SMN LEA
DX worked (17 countries) : 9A DL EA EI G GD GM HA I KP4 LY OH OK OM SM SP UA

Combined K0A, W0T, K0Y average overall rate: 122/hr (last year 144/hr)

W0BH as K0A/m did not operate 451 QSOs.
Assuming 20 seconds per QSO (most were tag-along QSOs) = 2.5 hours.
2.5 + .4 (off) = 2.9 hours off.
K0A/m operated 17.6 - 2.9 = 14.7 hours.

K0A/m overall rate : 115/hr (last year 135/hr)

Six-hour Rates (W0BH only)
2014 rates adjusted for 14.7 hours of operating time.

------------------- 2014--2013--2012--2011--2010--2009
Saturday 1400-1959 - 109 - 124 - 114 - 129 -- 86 - 145 Qs/hr
Saturday 2000-0159 - 111 - 109 - 124 -- 86 -- 67 - 114 Qs/hr
Sunday   1400-1959 - 127 - 172 - 134 - 106 - 123 - 164 Qs/hr

County Breakdown (in visited order)

Saturday (638 miles)

01  REN 20 Reno
02  STA 22 Stafford
03  EDW 95 Edwards
04  PAW 65 Pawnee
05  HOG 35 Hodgeman
06  FOR 67 Ford
07  GRY 41 Gray
08  HAS 33 Haskell
09  SEW 35 Seward
10  STE 41 Stevens
11  MTN 47 Morton
12  STN 80 Stanton
13  KEA 53 Kearny
14  HAM 48 Hamilton
15  GRT 48 Grant
16  FIN 39 Finney
17  SCO 47 Scott
18  LAN 39 Lane
19  NES 58 Ness
20  RUS 46 Rush
21  BRT 53 Barton
22  RIC 35 Rice
23  MCP 32 McPherson

Sunday (239 miles)

24  HVY 52 Harvey
25  MRN 79 Marion
26  BUT 22 Butler
27  DIC 38 Dickinson
28  MOR 45 Morris
29  GEA 48 Geary
30  RIL 45 Riley
31  CLY 48 Clay
32  CLO 36 Cloud
33  OTT 52 Ottawa
34  SAL 30 Saline
35  ELS 63 Ellsworth
36  LCN 63 Lincoln

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

78: N6MU - Reported a Sweep for the 4th year in a row!
52: VE9AA - A terrific effort from VE-land!
49: W4UT
46: NT2A - Reported 104 counties. Hope you didn't miss one of mine!
45: N8II
42: N5DO
36: SP9LJD
25: K7IA
24: KN4Y
22: KS4X
16: K7TM KG4IGC KQ3F VA3GKO
15: KJ4LTA OH6NIO W1END W8PO
14: KM4FO W7GF
13: K5WP ND4V NS9I W0PAN
12: DK3BN G3XVR KC3X
11: K7MJF UW7LL W5MF WA4WKL
10: DK2OY K1TKL K7ZYV KC0ZVN N6ENO W0OGH W2GN W7GDK

1x1 stations worked (7) : W0L/m N0R K0S W0R/m W0S K0N N0U/m
Other Kansas worked (2) : K0TRL W0YJT W0UY K3PA/0

W0BH Award Winners - First Place - Very Honorable Mention
----------------------------------------------------------
Most overall Qs ---- N6MU/78* ---- VE9AA/52 ----- W4UT/49
Most CW Qs --------- N6MU/46 ----- NT2A/41 ------ VE9AA/36 
Most PH Qs --------- N6MU/32 ----- W4UT/20 ------ N8II/17
Most counties ------ N6MU/35 ----- NT2A/34 ------ W4UT/31

*John claims 82 which is probably right. We logged all three 1x1s into the same
log and the computer crashed four times, so it was easy to make a mistake and
likely accounts for the difference with his and other counts. We'll try to do
better next time.

There are lots of people to thank for the 2014 QSO party success. The Santa Fe
Trail ARC once again ran KS0KS as our BONUS station and "wild card"
in the spelling competition.  We also had a number of school stations and
non-1x1 Kansas stations on the air to thank. Our mobiles and fixed 1x1 stations
seemed especially enthusiastic this year. If you were new this year, we hope
you'll join the rest of us again next year!

Special thanks to our out-of-state mobiles Jon/w0zq, Jerry/k5yaa and
Colin/ku5b, Bill/nu0q, and Mark/ki0i for visiting our state. Thanks to those of
you who spotted the mobiles on the traditional spotting networks. Those spots,
and our customized spotting network link, once again set up by Richard/k0rcj
and Kent/kb0rwi (who fixed the link for Sunday), allowed a number of you to
find that last letter needed to spell KANSAS, SUNFLOWER, or QSOPARTY and grab
an antique amateur stamp or two for your certificate. Thanks to Bruce/ki5te for
his help with the stamps.

This year, our sponsors (see the KSQP Sponsors link on the KSQP web site) came
through once again to provide the funding for our operations. We added a new
plaque, Kansas Mobile Unassisted, and all our 20 plaques were sponsored. If you
win a plaque, be sure to thank your plaque sponsor, and thank our corporate
sponsors with a shopping visit if get the chance! Thanks in advance to
Ron/ad0dx for his help in log-checking. Thanks to Aaron and Lorna for safely
negotiating the Kansas roads for me and putting two more 1x1 calls on the air. 
And finally, thanks Kent/kb0rwi, for your usual terrific job on the KSQP web
site.

As before, the best part of this was getting to meet or exchange emails with
many of you as we all tried to make this work. With your help, we did. Keep in
touch. Any suggestions for the 2015 Kansas QSO Party, or comments about this
one are always welcome ... !

73, Bob/w0bh/k0a
2014 KSQP Coordinator

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