[3830] TxQP NO5W/M Multi-Op Mobile LP

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                    Texas QSO Party

Call: NO5W/M
Operator(s): NO5W K5OT
Station: NO5W

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

Summary:
 Band  CW Qs  Ph Qs  Dig Qs
----------------------------
  160:                   
   80:                   
   40:   339             
   20:   791             
   15:   255             
   10:     1             
    6:                   
    2:                   
  UHF:                   
----------------------------
Total:  1386    0       0  Mults = 104  Total Score = 470,432

Club: Central Texas DX and Contest Club

Comments:

The above score includes 37,000 points for activating 37 counties.

Equipment: K3/100, HiQ 4/80, Dell D610-XP-CQ/X (logging), , Sony Vaio-Win7-CQ/X

(navigation), 2002 Pathfinder.

Larry-K5OT and I had been wanting to run mobile in a state QSO party for
several years ever since we did a TQP with pal Gary-W5ZL(SK) back in 2009.
Finally this year we were able to get our acts together including Saturday and
Sunday routes that seemed ambitious but doable. As it turned out both days
could have used some better route planning as both routes were too long.
Saturday's route in particular found us having to omit Bastrop, Colorado,
Austin and Fort Bend counties and found us about 60 miles shy of the hotel by
the Saturday night closing bell -- not a good thing when searching for dinner
after 10:30 even on the outskirts of Houston. Sunday found us bypassing Kerr,
Gillespie, and Hays partly due to poor route planning but also due to some
construction traffic near San Antonio. Except for a couple of missed turns we
stayed on track, but the tracks were just too long. Next year we hope to be
less ambitious and more realistic in our route planning.

Contrary to what you might have thought if you were tracking us on APRS, our 
route, though ambitious, did not include a Sunday morning detour into Mexico. 
Larry had given his XYL-Leona a demo of how to access the tracking site and a 
brief tutorial on how to follow us during the adventure ... what could be wrong

with that?  Well on Sunday morning there was a problem with the data or 
something that caused our track to enter Mexico and it appeared we had made a 
big figure-eight up to north of San Angelo and then down into Mexico near 
Chihuahua before looping back to our planned route east of San Antonio. The 
Mexico part was not a single point or two but a well-defined multiple point 
track. Well, it looked believable to Leona who freaked out when she saw this 
strange route and with a little imagination was convinced that we had been 
overtaken by some XE cartel and hijacked (by air?) to somewhere in Mexico.  She

tried calling Larry on his cell but he was operating with the noise-cancelling

phones and didn't hear the ring and of course the failure to answer only added

fuel to the imagination.  So she called K5NA, and her mind was eased when 
Richard told her that he had just worked us a few minutes earlier from a county

just west of Houston.  After a brief rest the GPS and the app (APRSDroid) were
reset and we were back on the planned route just west of Yoakum, TX. Our
virtual detour into Mexico was over.

Other than that bit of excitement the trip was uneventful with good weather
and, except for that one construction area near San Antonio, good road
conditions. 

Participation seemed a bit down from previous years but even so we managed to 
work 270 unique calls and were fortunate to have the following frequent callers

who supplied more than half of our QSOs: N6MU(56), NT2A(43), KI0I(38), N4PN
(35), WA6KHK(34), WA3HAE(31), OM2VL(29), K2DSW(27), K4BAI(25), N3RM(24),
NU0Q(23), N1LN(22), KN4Y(22), K3TW(21), KC3X(21), WB0PYF(20), W1END(18),
KE0G(18), W9MSE(17), KQ3F(17), AE5GT(16), K5LH(16), W1DWA(16), WB0CFF(15),
SP9LJD(15), N4JT(14), VE7CV(14), K5KS(13), N3RJ(12), K2RP(12), W7GF(12),
K5GE(12), and N9QS(12).

Our top five counties in terms of total QSOs were: Comal(71), Gonzales(62),
Johnson(57), Freestone(55), and Leon(53) and the top five in terms of initial
10 minute rate were: Blanco(192), Walker(174), Lavaca(174), Leon(168), and
Gonzales(162).

Many thanks to all of the Texas stations that helped put on the party and in 
particular to the mobiles who contributed their weekend and resources in our 
effort to activate all 254. Prior to the event all counties were scheduled to
be
on but of course we will have to wait and see if all those plans were realized.


A special thanks to W0BH, AD0DX, K5YAA, and KS5A who traveled from out of state
to help out. We hope you had fun and will be back to help out again in the 
future.

73

Chuck-NO5W
Larry-K5OT


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