[3830] FlQP NO5W(@NO5W/M) Multi-Op MobileCW LP

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Florida QSO Party

Call: NO5W
Operator(s): KN5O NO5W
Station: NO5W/M

Class: Multi-Op MobileCW LP
QTH: LA
Operating Time (hrs): 20

Summary:
 Band  CW Qs  Ph Qs
--------------------
   40:   121     
   20:  2243     
   15:    13     
   10:     0     
--------------------
Total:  2377    0  CW Mults = 68  Ph Mults = 0  Total Score = 646,544

Club: LA Contest Club

Comments:

K3/100, HI-Q 4/80, 2002 Pathfinder (164K miles), CQ/X 1.8.0.12, Streets &
Trips 2013, Dell D-610.

Here's the deal if you live in the New Orleans area and plan to operate mobile
in the FQP. 

Mid-morning Friday drive from New Orleans across the Lake Ponchatrain Causeway
to pick up your operating/driving mate in the Covington area. After lunch take
I-12/I-10 to somewhere fairly deep into the FL Panhandle - say Chipley. You'll
leave those counties to the west of Chipley for Sunday on the way home. 

Saturday morning twiddle your thumbs and cool your heels in Chipley until about
10:30am CDT and then head out for your first county. During the day stop briefly
for lunch and forgo dinner until the Saturday session ends at 9pm CDT. Look for
dinner or, if you're lucky, find a party of FQP operators and join them --
latter approach is preferred. Finally hit the sack between 11pm and midnight
CDT setting the alarm for an early rise around 5:30am CDT because the Sunday
session starts at 7am on your CDT biological clock. 

Sunday morning hit the road to be at your first county by 7am CDT and drive/
operate another 10 hrs timing your operations on your way home west on I-10 to
make sure you leave time for the big pileups in those panhandle counties and
run-run-run until you run out of time in Escambia at 5pm CDT. After dinner in
Spanish Fort, just east of Mobile, get back on I-10 for the trip back to the
Covington area and eventually back to New Orleans. Arrive New Orleans about
10:30pm CDT. Look at your trip odometer and it is closing in on 1600 miles.
Decompress with a class of vino or your favorite brew and read FQP scores and
comments on 3830 until QSBing to never land wondering when you will be able to
get around to writing some comments of your own. 

Fortunately when we relocated to New Orleans in 2012 and I gave a desciption
similar to the above to some locals I actually had two takers - Dallas K1DW and
Ted KN5O. This was the third year that KN5O has shared the driving and operating
with me. And it looks like we're good to go for 2017 as Ted has already been
strategizing on how we can improve our route to get more Qs in our log. 

If this sounds physically and mentally challenging it is. As KN4Y noted, the
late finish on Saturday night followed by the early start on Sunday morning is
tough on an elder body. So why would you want to operate mobile in the FQP?
Great participation, challenging pileups, and perhaps a little socializing with
some fellow operators are reasons that come immediately to mind.

Regarding participation we worked 437 unique calls and, of those, 87 were in
the log in 10 or more counties, 39 in 20 or more and 17 in 30 or more. So, we
had a lot of different callers and many of them stayed with us through a
significant part of the trip. We hope our operation was helpful in completing
many county sweeps. 

A big thank you to the following stations that accounted for 50% of our QSOs:
WA3HAE(37), N9CK(37), K0RI(36), K3WW(35), VA3DF(35), K9PG(33), K0HC(32),
N5ZK(32), VE3KZ(32), W8WVU(32), WJ9B(31), W9IU(30), SP9LJD(30), K8MR(30),
K9OM(29), K0RC(29), N2AN(29), VE3RZ(28), NS9I(27), K5OT/2(26), K8IR(26),
W5MF(25), K1GQ(24), N2CQ(23), W1END(22), NB1N(22), W9RE(22), DL3DXX(21),
W1TO(21), N8NA(21), N2BJ(21), N3RD(20), I4VEQ(20), HP1XT(20), W2RR(20),
W1PH(19), W1UJ(19), N1CC(19), N3DXX(19), VA3EC(18), AA3B(18), KB1W(18),
N6MU(18), W1FJ(17), N5AU(17), N2NC(17), W6KC(17), NN3W(17), VA3ATT(16),
K9UIY(16), K0FX(16).

There were no Murphys in the hardware or software and although we got about 30
minutes behind schedule on Saturday afternoon we managed to regroup to activate
all 17 of our planned Saturday counties. On Sunday we essentially nailed the
schedule with the only deviation being a result of delaying lunch from Madison
to Liberty. All 39 of our planned counties were activated during the weekend.
The biggest gremlin by far was outrageous power line noise on Saturday during
Wakulla, Jefferson, and Taylor.

Maintaining schedule is especially important for us on Sunday since we want to
reserve time for the Sunday afternoon trek across the western-most counties of
the panhandle since this is the most exciting and challenging part of our
route. Here are some results for that group of counties along with a comparison
to the overall contest.

                  Initial      Minutes     Hourly
County     QSOs   10-MinRate  In County     Rate
Washington  75      192         23          196
Holmes      62      114         19          196
Walton      76      192         20          228
Okaloosa    56      180         20          168         
SantaRosa   66      228         19          208
Escambia    35      210         10          210

Group      370                 111          200 
Overall   2377                1200          118

Generally the pileups were disciplined with the on-set of chaos mostly
depending on how much sensory overload and fumbling around with fat-fingering
was being experienced by the NO5W/m operator. It is not surprising that the
fingers seemed to get fatter as the party entered its final hour. By and large
the pile stood by when the operator was trying to get final info from a caller
or trying to straighten out the fingering errors. That is surely appreciated.

We seem to always struggle a bit with multipliers although we had good results
across the US only missing AK and MS. Ontario operators were out in force and
east of VE3 was also well represented. However, VE4, VE5, and VE6 were no shows
with our only province west of VE3 being BC. DX mults (16) were from Europe(11)
and South-Central America (5). In the DX category SP9LJD was our most frequent
caller with 30 Qs and was often louder than US stations. From the WVE states
and provinces the top ten contributors to the QSO totals were TX(192), MA(177),
ON(169), PA(156), IL(133), WI(115), CA(110), MI(104), NY(96), and OH(95).

Regarding the socializing mentioned previously we have in the past enjoyed
dinners with folks like K1TO, K8NZ, K5KG, VE7ZO, K4BAI, and KU8E and last year
ended the Saturday session sharing a gas pump near Ocala with N4FP. This year
we spent Saturday night just north of Tampa where Chris-NX4N and XYL Lilli
graciously saved us from searching for dinner by inviting us over for pizza
where we exchanged tales of the Saturday session with Red-K0LUZ, Kevin-N4KM,
John-K4BAI, and Jeff-KU8E & sons. Thanks Chris and Lilli for the
hospitality, we certainly enjoyed it and look forward to seeing the group
photo.

Finally thanks to the FCG for their continued support of the FQP, one of the
finest state QSO parties. 

73 es OJ,

Chuck-NO5W
Ted-KN5O


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