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

Thu Sep 3 13:10:53 EDT 2015

                    Kansas QSO Party

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

Class: Mobile SO Mixed LP
QTH: 26 KS counties
Operating Time (hrs): 15.7

Summary:
 Band  CW Qs  Ph Qs  Dig Qs
----------------------------
   80:                   
   40:  254     25       
   20:  651    677       
   15:                   
   10:                   
    6:                   
----------------------------
Total:  905    702      0  Mults = 56  Total Score = 230,664

Club: 

Comments:

The 2015 Kansas QSO Party by W0BH as K0A/m

It was a year of change this year. XYL Lorna/k0why and I bought a
"new" '05 Chevy Astro with 64,000 miles to replace our aging '91
Astro with 296,000 miles. The old Astro still runs fine and talks and listens
like a dream, so I wanted to make sure the new one would perform comparably
before retiring it. The Astro body was the same, so I positioned the three
triple mag mounts (plus 2m/440) on the huge metal roof in exactly the same
position as the other van. Instead of the IC706MkIIG (still in the old van), I
installed an IC7000 plus other electronics in an upside down milk create behind
the driver's seat. A fan on the side of the crate provided additional cooling,
and wires were hidden for a really clean installation. Connections are on the
outside of the milk crate, so I can easily take out the installation and move
it to another vehicle if needed.

Did it work? Almost. 80m CW, which tested fine with the antenna analyzer, had
an infinite SWR when transmitting. After the usual tests, all negative, I
swapped out the mag mount. In the process and before hiding the feedline with
all the other wires, I draped it over the seat and tried it that way. Perfect.
So I hid the wires and it went back infinite SWR. To make a long story short, I
finally ran the feedline along the roofline and down and it worked, no tuner
needed. I had my Hustler antennas switched from 80(CW)-10 on both CW and SSB.
As it turned out, I didn't have time for 80m this year, but it's now ready. 

This year, Lorna volunteered to drive both Saturday and Sunday. I was so busy
coordinating routes with the other mobiles, that I finally put my route
together on Thursday night. All 105 counties were already covered several times
over, so I concentrated on filling in the Saturday and Sunday gaps. That gave me
a northeast route on Saturday and a north/south route on Sunday. I usually go
west, so many of the counties were new for me during the KSQP. My route also
ended up being 10 counties shorter than last year which felt a bit unusual, but
it was certainly less hectic.

You might have noticed that we had surprise company as the SSB Sprint moved to
our weekend this year. Alan/KO7X from WY was SK a few weeks ago. It's a contest
tradition to honor the passing of a contester by using his name during a
contest. I've known Alan for many years and visited him in Wyoming a number of
times, so I planned to be home several hours early to operate at least part of
the Sprint in his memory. 

Saturday

We got off a few minutes late on a cloudy, cool (for August) morning. I always
start on 40CW and a few CQs later, my first Q with N9JF in IL was in the log.
That turned out not to be a fluke, as 40m was in solid all day with the same
gang finding me almost immediately from each county. Eager to smoke test the
rest of the bands, the rig and the antennas, I worked K3DQB first on 20CW, K0DO
first on 40SSB, and N5MLP first on 20SSB. All worked great. We're in business!

We have a four-county line about 30 miles north which I've never operated from,
so we headed there first. You never know what you're in for in Kansas as you
travel back roads, and this line was no exception. A road which was on my GPS
seemed to be covered up by a nice pasture with fences and other assorted
impediments to mobile radio contesting. Detour time, but we finally got there
and commenced a terrific US/VE one hour run on both CW and SSB. That also
turned out to not be a fluke. Conditions on both bands held, but unfortunately
so did the lack of DX and 15m. I read later that some DX was worked out west by
mobiles, but very few made it into my log, and most were ESP contacts except for
Mexico.

After finishing the line, we headed east into the beautiful Flint Hills.
Hilltopping was fun, but lots of QSB along the way. Signals would go from
strong to weak in seconds, and that also turned out to be the rule for the day.
Looking at my notes for Saturday, I really didn't have any because nothing
notable happened except lots of QSOs with lots of great ops. That's the way you
like it, but it doesn't make for a very interesting report. If you want
"interesting", you absolutely don't want to miss Jerry/k5yaa's 3830
report as he operated W0L/m with his kilowatt antenna/generator trailer. If
that's not enough teaser for you, his back window blew out and he got two
speeding tickets in one town. Don't miss his report!

When requested, Lorna got on with K0WHY/m and enjoyed working ops who followed
us along. She also had her binoculars and went bird watching as stop time
permitted. We had one 45 minute stop scheduled at Tuttle Creek reservoir in
Pottawatomie county. It turned out to be a very nice, very large park and
campground. Unfortunately, it was the wrong time of day for good bird watching,
but the runs were excellent! Might have to head back there for some camping
sometime.

As we were on the backstretch heading for home on I-135, John/n6mu called in to
report 101 counties (out of 105) already worked. He still needed Lincoln county
which we could have provided by heading west, but he knew I was going there on
Sunday and I thought another op was due to go through there yet on Saturday, so
we both decided to keep with the plan. As it turns out, John missed only Lincoln
on Saturday so I'm kicking myself for not going, but he and Paul/n4pn both got
the county sweep on Sunday. John's comment about missing the Saturday sweep?
"It just gives me something to shoot for next year!" Maybe we can put
them all out on both Saturday and Sunday next year. I can dream, right? 
Congratulations to Paul for earning his first Worked All Kansas, and to John
for doing it an incredible five years in a row!

I also worked ten SSB Sprint contacts from the mobile on the way back. We
arrived home about an hour and a half early and quickly unpacked the van. I
fired up W0BH and put Kansas and the KSQP on the air for the Sprint gang. I
heard some of our fixed stations working Sprinters as well. It was very special
to use the name Alan and remember good contests and good times with KO7X. I
missed him (and I missed WY) this year in the KSQP, and I suspect many of you
all did, too.

Ron/ad0dx and his XYL/driver Kathy were planning to work the three county line
just three miles from my house and then stay overnight, but they got slowed
down south, so they rolled in about 10:30 pm. Lorna and Kathy chatted about
birds until late, and Ron and I chatted about mobile contesting. Believe it or
not, there are a number of similarities between the two hobbies! Both of us get
excited about rare finds, we think nothing about going to out-of-the way places
for reasons most people would probably use as excuses to  stay home, we keep
lists, we'd love to have some of that really expensive equipment, etc, etc. 
But I digress. At days end we had 418 miles on the van and 1085 Qs / 54 mults
in the log in not quite 10 hours of KSQP operating time. A good day.

Sunday

Sunday dawned cool and almost foggy. I reloaded the van and Lorna and I enjoyed
breakfast with Ron and Kathy. Ron uses the long Hustler masts on his mobile mag
mounts, so his antennas are truly impressive. Coming in last night he somehow
made it under my overhead feedline which was sagging a bit, but heading out he
snagged it while I was videoing rather than watching. Fortunately, my breakaway
strain relief worked, so no damage done to either antenna system, but we had to
take the feedline down before I could get my van out. We had both our vans
parked in the grass while were working with the feedline and I saw a nice photo
op. I got my feet wet in the really wet grass, so wet socks to start as I didn't
take time to change. The pictures, however, were worth it.

Once again, 40CW was terrific at the start, so I ran a bunch before going to
20CW. I noticed right away that the SWR was much higher than it should have
been. After checking all the obvious things, I decided that the 20m resonator
coil was probably damp since I'd left the van outside and there was lots of
moisture on the windows and metal. I went to 40SSB which worked fine, worked
some more 40CW, then tried 20CW again and everything worked fine. That turned
out to be the only radio problem during the trip.

It's always a challenge to fit between all kinds of nets on Sunday. One
gentleman came on my 40SSB run frequency of 7238 (they never seem to identify
themselves) and suggested I move because a net was soon starting up on 7245. I
said, "what frequency was the net?"  "7245". Guess my
mobile must have picked up about 10kW somewhere. I made a few more contacts and
it was time to go to CW anyway.

Sunday always goes too fast in the mobile. As we headed to our last
three-county line of Mitchell, Osborne, and Lincoln, the roads went from gravel
and sand to dirt. Definitely not the place to be after a rain. The line was
really out there in the middle of nowhere, a perfect place to park! As I was
enjoying the pileup, a big RV rig came bumping down the road. He stopped in
front of the van and Lorna got out to chat. It turns out he was looking for the
geodetic center of North America and wondered if we knew where it was. I'd seen
it as a dot on the Kansas map and knew it was only a few miles away, so Lorna
showed him what we knew. I personally knew we were at the geographic center of
MIT/OSB/LCN (well, not really :-), but I had to look up "geodetic
center." Turns out it's like Zulu time for map makers, a reference point
from which all measurements in North America were taken.

Because we got off a bit late and stayed too long at the last line to
accommodate all the callers, we drove fast and made it to Ellsworth county, but
didn't make our last county. Fortunately two other stations did so it wasn't a
disaster, but it's been awhile since I haven't made all my promised counties.
We'll try harder next time, and we're already looking forward to next time.
Hope you are, too! We finished the party with almost the same score as last
year (more multipliers this year) even though we operated two hours less, so it
was a good year. We couldn't do it without you all looking for us, so from both
Lorna and me, a big THANKS for the fun!

Stats

We operated 15.7 hours, 1639 combined Qs, 493 unique calls (up from 458 last
year) 32 dupes, one radio. I'm guessing most of the dupes came from ops
reworking us on Sunday for the Sunday Plaque.

States not worked ----- : AK WY 

VE not worked ---------- : NS NT NU YT PE NL
KS worked (7 counties) - : GRT SHA THO JOH MRN HVY MCP
DX worked (17 countries) : DL ON XE

K0A/m overall rate : 106/hr (last year 115/hr)

Six-hour Rates (W0BH only, Lorna's contacts removed)
2015 rates adjusted for 15.2 hours of operating time.

--------------------- 2015--2014--2013--2012--2011--2010--2009
Saturday 1408-1959 --- 114 - 109 - 124 - 114 - 129 -- 86 - 145 Qs/hr
Saturday 2000-0027 --- 108 - 111 - 109 - 124 -- 86 -- 67 - 114 Qs/hr
Sunday   1413-1959 --- 101 - 127 - 172 - 134 - 106 - 123 - 164 Qs/hr

County Breakdown (in visited order)

Saturday (418 miles)
01 MCP 119 McPherson
02 MRN 63 Marion
03 SAL 86 Saline
04 DIC 107 Dickinson
05 MOR 60 Morris
06 LYO 46 Lyon
07 OSA 35 Osage
08 SHA 38 Shawnee
09 WAB 40 Wabaunsee
10 RIL 86 Riley
11 GEA 54 Geary
12 POT 69 Pottawatomie
13 CLY 51 Clay
14 WAS 45 Washington
15 REP 53 Republic
16 CLO 45 Cloud
17 OTT 31 Ottawa

Sunday (244 miles)
18 HVY 24 Harvey
19 REN 51 Reno
20 STA 65 Stafford
21 BRT 66 Barton
22 RSL 105 Russell
23 OSB 77 Osborne
24 MIT 52 Mitchell
25 LCN 103 Lincoln
26 ELS 36 Ellsworth

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

46 N6MU - Congrats on the 5th County Sweep in a row, John!
37 N4PN - Congrats on your 1st Worked All Kansas, Paul!
26 VE7CV - Nice work from BC, Pete!
21 K2DSW - Bob worked 21 of my counties, all on 40m CW!
20 AD4RE N4CD N9JF W4UT
14 K0DEQ K0IP N3RM N8NA W0GXQ W7GDK
16 K7IA K8MR
15 NA2X NU1O W1DWA W6KC
14 K0DEQ K0IP N3RM N8NA W0GXQ W7GDK
13 K7SEN N1API VE3HED WC7Q WX4G
12 KN4Y
11 NO5W WA8DXB WA8REI
10 AB7NK N3KN NW0M VE5KS W2CVW W5ASP W6RKC W7OM

1x1 stations worked (6) : N0U/m N0P W0S K0S N0A/m K0N
Other Kansas worked (1) : W0RT

W0BH Award Winners - First Place - Very Honorable Mention
----------------------------------------------------------
Most overall Qs ---- N6MU/46 ---- N4PN/37 ---- VE7CV/26
Most CW Qs --------- N6MU/25 ---- K2DSW/21 --- N4PN/N4CD/20 
Most PH Qs --------- N6MU/21 ---- N4PN/17 ---- VE7CV/14
Most counties ------ N6MU/25 ---- N4PN/22 ---- K2DSW/21

There are lots of people to thank for the 2015 Kansas 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 have three Kansas school
stations (Emporia State, Kansas State and Kansas University) to thank as well
as our non-1x1 Kansas stations. Our mobiles and fixed stations were out there
with our best county coverage yet. I also know we had several very enthusiastic
Kansas Rookies joining us. We hope you come back next year!

Special thanks to our out-of-state mobiles Jon/w0zq, Jerry/k5yaa, Bill/nu0q,
Alan/n5na and Andrea/k5aks, Mark/ki0i, Connie/k5mc and Pam/n5kw, and
Duffey/kk6mc for visiting our state. We also have Alan to thank for the
wonderful color-coded map of activated counties he made with CQ/X software by
NO5W. We had a surprise mobile as K0PY took a break from operating fixed and
put W0W/m on the air. That gave us a record number of mobiles (16) this year
including Lorna who made some contacts with her own call as we drove along.
THANK YOU THANK YOU to all. 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, 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. Special thanks to
new club sponsor Johnson County Radio Amateurs Club. We added a 23rd plaque, the
Sunday Sunflower plaque and it will be interesting to see who wins that one. I
know a number of you were working on it! If you do win a plaque, be sure to
thank your plaque sponsor, and thank our corporate sponsors with a shopping
visit if you get  the chance. Thanks in advance to Ron/ad0dx for his help in
log-checking. Thanks to Lorna for safely negotiating the Kansas roads for me.
And finally, thanks Kent/kb0rwi, for your great job on the KSQP web site. I
know you're extra busy right now recording incoming logs.

This year was unusual in that it was a fifth September weekend and not the
Labor Day weekend. We usually share this weekend with the Ohio QSO Party and
the Hawaii QSO Party, so I would also like to thank Jim/k8mr, the chair of the
OQP for promoting us in Ohio this year. We all enjoyed the Ohio visitors to
Kansas in our logs! Next year we'll be back sharing bandwidth again, but we've
managed that well in the past and I'm sure will do so again in the future. The
OQP and HIQP exchanges are now the same as ours (Ohio changed theirs this
year), so that will make logging between parties easy. Thanks for that one,
too, Jim!

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 2016 Kansas QSO Party, or comments about this
one are always welcome ... !

73, Bob/w0bh/k0a (and Lorna/k0why)
2015 KSQP Coordinator

PS We have one unsponsored plaque left, the USA Sunflower Plaque award by
drawing to maybe you if you didn't already earn a plaque. Any takers for plaque
sponsorship so we can complete the sponsorship "Sweep?"

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