[3830] FlQP NO5W M/SCW LP
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Tue May 2 02:42:41 EDT 2017
Florida QSO Party
Call: NO5W
Operator(s): KN5O NO5W
Station: NO5W
Class: M/SCW LP
QTH: LA
Operating Time (hrs): 20
Summary:
Band CW Qs Ph Qs
--------------------
40: 364
20: 1728
15:
10:
--------------------
Total: 2092 0 CW Mults = 60 Ph Mults = 0 Total Score = 502,080
Club: LA Contest Club
Comments:
K3/100, HI-Q 4/80, Dell D610 logging, Sony Vaio Navigation, both running CQ/X
1.8.0.13, and Streets and Trips 2013, Garmin GPS 18PC and Pharos GPS
receivers.
After all was said and done, Sunday night dinner in Spanish Fort was complete,
logs and computers put away, and the drive home in the rain was over, it was
another awesome FQP mobile experience. But this one reminded me of when I
thought I would become a golfer. Out to play a round the front-side scorecard
would be littered with bogeys, doube-bogeys and worse with nary a par and
thoughts would be present of the sticks going in a garage sale at the next
opportunity. But the greens fee had been paid so what the heck we'd try the
second nine and wouldn't you know somehow there would be a few pars and maybe
even a birdie. Forget the garage sale, that's all it would take to bring us
back for more of the same the next week.
As many have commented the Saturday front-side was the pits in the 2017 FQP
with
propagation poor and the level of participation seeming to be way down. For us
that resulted in a mid-party Q count of only 771 and the discouraging prospect
of ending up with about 1500 Qs, well below our Q count from the past several
years, if we found more of the same on Sunday. It was downright embarrassing to
have to report our meagre results to the AD4ES and K4OJ crews gathered at the
NX4N pizza feed Saturday night. Fortunately the crews sitting around the pizza
and the key lime pie were kind and only flinched a little when we announced our
771. The pizza as well as the key lime pie was excellent and the hospitality
of Chris and Lilli is much appreciated. It's good to know that, after a long
day on the FQP road with minimum lunch, you can find a good place to have a
pizza and trade some good FQP tales. In addition to the pizza and the key lime
we got a tour of the very well-appointed AD4ES mobile van before departing for
the hotel.
We were definitely discouraged when we retired for the night with the prospect
of a long drive on Sunday. But hey, our dues had been paid as we were already
out two nights of lodging and were in the Tampa area needing to get back to
southeast Louisiana so we thought we might as well do a little radio on the
drive home using our planned Sunday route. Sunday started a bit slow in Sumter
but the rate picked up with each new county and by the time we reached Escambia
and the Florida-Alabama state line on I-10 we were having a ball living on the
edge of chaos trying to handle the big pile ups in Escambia, Gadsden, Suwanee,
Baker, and others and the way home found us happy with the additional 1321 Qs
we had picked up on Sunday and thinking about strategies to improve our results
for next year.
One thing we will try to improve on next year is our Saturday route. Our Sunday
route seems to play well but Saturday found us bogged down in Polk county and
after missing a couple of turns in Lakeland due to traffic we had burned up
enough time in Polk that we had to skip Lee, our most southern county, by
taking a short cut to I-75 through Charlotte. I-75 was a welcome sight by that
time as the traffic was really moving along that stretch from Port Charlotte up
to the Sunshine Skyway Bridge. Even though I couldn't convince the toll booth
lady to give me a senior rate or one for being in the FQP the bridge provided a
beautiful night time view of the bay area. A quick run up to Lutz and NX4N via
SR60 found us sitting down to the pizza less than ten minutes after the closing
bell.
Here are some stats from our FQP adventure across 43 counties including some
that show the difference between Saturday and Sunday. In the following the
county results are ordered by decreasing values in the Rate column. In this
table Rate is the initial ten-minute rate on entry into the county and is a
proxy for the size of the pileup greeting us. The column labeled First is,
of course, the first station in the log in that county. It should be pointed
out that some of our 40+ dupes have not been removed from the following so the
Qs will not add up to the values reported above.
County Qs Rate First Day
Escambia 55 252 K7IA Sunday
Gadsden 75 222 K5OT Sunday
Suwannee 65 216 AA0AW Sunday
Baker 47 210 W8WVU Sunday
Union 47 204 AA3B Sunday
Leon 55 204 W8WVU Sunday
Walton 60 204 N9CK Sunday
Madison 66 204 W8PI Sunday
Bay 58 198 AE1T Sunday
Hamilton 72 198 W8WVU Sunday
Liberty 41 192 K5OT Sunday
Columbia 64 192 K0HC Sunday
Holmes 72 192 IZ3NVR Sunday
Jackson 72 192 K9UIY Sunday
Okaloosa 48 186 KG5EE Sunday
Manatee 55 174 K1GQ Saturday
Calhoun 72 174 K7QA Sunday
Charlotte 35 162 AA3B Saturday
Hillsborough 62 156 KU8E Saturday
Washington 66 156 WI9WI Sunday
Gilchrist 34 150 N2ZN Saturday
DeSoto 38 150 WB5JID Saturday
Pinellas 45 150 KE4CQ Saturday
Santa Rosa 44 138 AA7V Sunday
Wakulla 48 138 W8WVU Saturday
Hardee 39 132 WB5JID Saturday
Hernando 49 132 NS9I Saturday
Franklin 28 120 WA3HAE Saturday
Dixie 29 120 K3WW Saturday
Putnam 29 120 W4NZ Sunday
Pasco 43 120 K8QKY Saturday
Alachua 24 114 NE9U Sunday
Sarasota 61 114 AB1J Saturday
Polk 72 114 K9CT Saturday
Jefferson 106 114 N9RV Saturday+Sunday
Lafayette 29 108 NE9U Saturday
Clay 20 102 VA7ST Sunday
Citrus 31 102 VA3FV Saturday
Levy 38 96 W5FOC Saturday
Sumter 18 84 WN4AFP Sunday
Taylor 26 84 K0HC Saturday
Bradford 57 60 K9CT Sunday
Marion 35 54 VA3DF Sunday
With Sunday occupying the top sixteen slots it is clear that the pileup
activity was more intense on Sunday. With 40m coming to life on Saturday
evening the pileups in Manatee, Charlotte, and Hillsborough added a glimmer of
hope for activity picking up on Sunday. The slow start on Sunday is clear from
the rates for Marion, Bradford, and Sumter which were Sunday morning counties.
The highest rate counties Escambia, Gadsden, and Suwannee were all afternoon.
During the FQP we worked 362 unique calls and appreciate the QSOs from each.
But special mention goes to the 43 stations who contributed more than half of
our QSOs: K3WW(47), N9CK(45), VE3KZ(42), K9CT(40), K9OM(39), K8IR(38),
VA3DF(38), NE9U(36), W2RR(34), WA3HAE(31), K0HC(30), K9CW(29), K3WJV(29),
WI9WI(29), K0RC(28), W8WVU(28), WJ9B(25), K5GA(25), W8PI(24), K7SV(24),
VE3UTT(23), NS9I(23), K0TI(23), VE9AA(23), VE3OM(21), NW0M(20), W5TM(20),
W1QK(20), W9OA(20), N2AN(19), N8II(19), W1FJ(17), NQ5K(16), W1WEF(16),
N7IR(15), W1TO(15), VE3CX(15), VE3BR(14), K7IA(14), K0VXU(13), N5NA(13),
N8BJQ(13), and I4VEQ(13).
In past FQPs multipliers have been our scoring weak spot and 2017 was no
different with only 60 mults being captured. No stations were worked from AK,
ND, NE, SD, or UT. The Canadians were well represented by AB, BC, MB, NB, ON,
PE, and QC with the big VE turnout coming from ON -- thanks for the great
support from VE3. Conditions did not support many DX contacts and we only
managed to work HA, HH, I, JA, KP4, OK, SP, and TG, but there were some good
signals in there especially from stations worked in I, OK, and SP.
The pileups were large but for the most part well-behaved, standing by once it
was clear we were responding to a given station. We certainly appreciated that
behavior and I'm sure others in the pile did also. For some of the larger
pileups it became necessary to attempt to spread the pileup out time-wise by
using different TU messages sometimes short and sometimes long but always with
a goal of identifying our call and county every 3-4 QSOs.
Apologies for any failures to meet that goal.
It's always fun to have an eye-ball QSO with another mobile during FQP and this
year, in addition to the AD4ES and K4OJ crews at the pizza party, we had an
opportunity for a short QSO with Tom-K4ZGB who walked up while we were pumping
gas in one of the panhandle counties. We also had a near eyeball QSO and a real
40m one with Wayne and Marty of the N4FP team who pulled up and parked up the
street from us as we were leaving our Clay County stop and run location in
Keystone Heights. We had bumped into Wayne and Marty while pumping gas in
Marion County a few FQPs ago.
Finally many thanks to all those who participated in the 2017 FQP and to those
behind the scenes people that check the logs, cheerlead, write the reports,
procure and mail the plaques and all the other things that it takes to have a
QSO party as successful as the FQP has been during its 20 years. Here's to 20
more.
Hope to be back again next year.
73 es OJ
Chuck-NO5W
Ted-KN5O
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