[3830] KsQP N0A(AD0DX) Mobile SO CW LP

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                    Kansas QSO Party

Call: N0A
Operator(s): AD0DX
Station: AD0DX

Class: Mobile SO CW LP
QTH: KS
Operating Time (hrs): 16

Summary:
 Band  CW Qs  Ph Qs  Dig Qs
----------------------------
   80:                   
   40:   424             
   20:   678    42       
   15:                   
   10:                   
    6:                   
----------------------------
Total:  1102    42      0  Mults = 52  Total Score = 176,380

Club: 

Comments:

The Kansas QSO Party has come and gone and we had a lot of fun.  
My wife was my driver and we covered 25+ counties in the KSQP.  This was my
first time using my Ford Ranger;
in previous years I had taken my 2004 Chevy Venture.  The Venture is great
because it has a large roof.
Unfortunately as I put more and more miles on it, the engine noise got worse
and worse.  It was so bad 
that in the Missouri QSO Party this year I couldn't operate while my wife was
driving.  

Usually I drive east to west in northern KS on Sat and return on Sunday, one
county south of Saturday's 
counties.  But this year a number of other operators picked similar routes,
ending up in Cheyenne county in the NW corner of KS.  Looking at the mobile
route map on the KSQP web site about a week before the KSQP, there were a lot
of counties not covered at all in the SE corner of Kansas. So I called Bob to 
discuss route options and decided to change to the SE corner.

My plan was to be in Miami county (south of Johnson County KS) for the 9am
start.  We left home at 8:15 and were almost through Miami county by 9am.  I
was thinking that we would stop on the Miami / Linn county
line to start the contest.  When we got to the county line, there was
construction, and we would of had to dodge some orange cones to get there...
and I didn't want to star the contest on a bad note speaking with a KS
sheriff.

So we skipped Miami but knew we had good coverage there and started in Linn
county.

The drive south to Cherokee county was uneventful and I was having a steady
stream of qso's.  The only hiccup was that another 1x1 station was on my
assigned KSQP frequency so I have to move down to find a clear frequency.  

I made a small route change and didn't update my web site.  I stopped at a 3
county line of Montgomery / Wilson / Neosho when I realized that the 3 county
line was available.  I had planned two single county 
stops for MGY and WIL.  For some reason, I couldn't get a good pileup going at
this 3 county line.  I was only working stations after calling CQ / KSQP. 
Maybe there was a louder station on top of me that I couldn't hear.

Due to my engine noise in my Venture, I sold my ICOM 7000 and bought a K3.  I
had used the K3 in the Oklahoma Qso party and the Missouri Qso party already,
but feel like finally in the KSQP I was starting to get the hang of it.  The K3
has NB and NR features for removing electrical noise and during the contest
I was often turning them on and off and adjusting them.  I prefer to hear a
little static in the headphones; I'm afraid that if I turn up the NB / NR
settings too high so that there is no static then I might be missing some
stations calling.

I have a K1EL winkeyer, but a few years ago in the KSQP it stopped working,
probably due to the 105F temperatures outside and the fact that it was sitting
on the dashboard directly in the sun for 8 hours.  
Somehow I haven't gotten around to checking the solder joints, so I used a
combination of the K3 cw memories and sending by hand during the contest. The
K3 has 4 memories, and I had them programmed like this;
M1: KSQP KQSP DE N0A/M N0A/
M2: ABC (where abc is the current county, I update this during the contest)
M3: unused
M4: CQ CQ CQ DE N0A/M N0A/M

This works pretty well.  I send the callsign of the station I'm working using
the keyer, as well as '599 cty'.One trick that Bob W0BH taught me is that the
reverse beacon network does not pick up KSQP KQSP, it is only looking for CQ
CQ... . So each time I cross a county line or change bands, I use M4 to send CQ

again.  This seems to really work well, and you can tell the stations that are
using the reverse beacon network.

When the bands are open to Europe, often in previous contests when I would
cross a county line and call CQ, there would be a European station right
there.

Speaking of Europe, not many Europeans worked in the contest.  I worked DL3GA,
ON4UN and a handful of others.  15mtrs was really hot during the MOQP this
year; that was fun too.  Sometimes the EU stations were louder in the pileups
than the US stations.  But even though the bands were not great for DX on the 
weekend, there were lots of US stations on and more than a few good pileups.

I worked the most Canadian stations ever during this contest; BC, AB, SK, MB,
ON, QC, NB.  Being a Canadian myself it's always nice to work the motherland.

I had 51 multipliers this year which is not bad.  I missed NH / VT / AK / HI /
UT / WY in the US.  

Anyway, Sat proceeded quite nicely.  I had planned a stop at the Elk /
Chautauqua county line and this turned 
out interesting.  The road on the map to get there turned out to be a dirt
lane, back between the fields.
All of a sudden I was glad we were in my Ford Ranger and not the Chevy Venture.
 After about 4 miles 
we got back to the Elk / CHA county line.  It was very beautiful country there.
 My wife is an avid bird watcher so she got out and found that there were a lot
of birds.  She even saw a new 'life' bird (one she had never seen before).  I
had planned on a 20 min stop but the weather was great, the birding was 
good, and I had nice pileups on 20 and 40, so we stayed more like 45 min there.
 Plus the 15 min drive to get in and out, and we lost some time here, but it
seemed like it was worth it.

Our next stop was Timber Creek Lake in Cowley.  It turns out you have to pay to
sit beside the lake, and it was getting late so we just sat at the entrance and
made contacts for 20 min or so. 

By now it was getting late, and we started heading towards Wichita and then the
QTH of Bob W0BH who had offered to let us stay the night (thanks Bob and
Lorna!).  So we're driving in the dark on a narrow road heading towards Wichita
with everyone else going home from the lake, when I start to notice a 
slight burning smell.  Hmmm.  No flames, but something doesn't smell right and
it smells like something is burning... just a little.  Unfortunately it's very
dark and there are no shoulders and it's 8:40pm and 
the contest ends in 20 min.  So my wife keeps driving and I keep making
contacts.  Then right at 8:58 the voltage display on the K3 changes from 13.9v
to 11.1v.  Hmmm... I power my radio from a 100AmpHour deep cycle battery and
use a voltage booster to keep the voltage at 13.9 at the radio.  This battery 
is 5 years old and I've used it in previous contests all weekend and never had
a problem. It turns out 
that the voltage booster had switched off and was displaying the 'low battery'
warning.

At Bob's we found out the battery was at 20% and Bob was kind enough to charge
it up overnight.  I'm not sure if it was due to the high heat in my garage this
summer or the fact that the battery is 5 years old and I don't use it very often
(mostly qso parties).

On Sunday morning, Bob suggested that I visit the HAR / MAR / MCP 3 county
line.  This turned out to be 
fairly active and I spent 40 min there.  So already Sunday was behind
schedule.

Things were going well up to Manhattan KS.  We had stopped at the WAB / GEA
county line for 20 or 30 minutes and this was a busy stop.  After that my wife
was tired so I drove into Manhattan KS and 
was planningon taking Hwy 24 east.  With my wife asleep and being a little
tired myself, I missed the turn to Hwy 24, and ended up on Hwy 18 instead. 
Then I found that Wabaunsee is a wide county 
and since I had already operated the WAB / GEA county line just kept driving
east.  This turned out to be a bad decision.  I think we lost 40 minutes there.
 Finally I ended up for the last 45 min of the contest at the POT / SHA county
line.

All in all it was a great KSQP.  Thanks to everyone for all the qso's and for
your patience during the 
contest.  Thanks for your patience too when I didn't respond very quickly. 
Once during the contest after calling CQ I looked up and there was a car coming
around the corner towards us, in our lane.  And I was also the navigator (maybe
I should get a GPS) so I was looking at the Delorme maps between calling 
CQ at times.

Thanks to Bob W0BH for organizing a great contest and to Bob and Lorna for
letting us stay overnight.

See you next year,

Ron, N0A/m, AD0DX


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