[3830] KsQP W0B/M Mobile MOST LP

Tue Sep 5 13:41:01 EDT 2017

Kansas QSO Party

Call: W0B/M
Operator(s): W0BH N0QD
Station: W0B/M

Class: Mobile MOST LP
QTH: 31 KS counties
Operating Time (hrs): 16.7

Summary:
 Band  CW Qs  Ph Qs  Dig Qs
----------------------------
   80:   21      0       
   40:  183     72       
   20:  529    481       
   15:   11     13       
   10:                   
    6:                   
----------------------------
Total:  744    566      0  Mults = 54  Total Score = 181,656

Club: 

Comments:

The 2017 Kansas QSO Party by W0BH as W0B/m

To fill some last minute "holes", I waited until the last minute to
plan my 2017 KSQP route. With 14 mobiles out there (and Jerry/k5yaa/m
surprising us on Sunday to make it 15), we already had excellent county
coverage according to the proposed routes and maps. I decided to head up to the
far northeastern county of Doniphan to pick up some less-covered counties, then
head back via the top tier of counties and return home for the night. One of my
goals not yet achieved is to have all counties activated on Sunday. I could have
hit the remaining ones with a 12 hour route, but in 6 hours I settled for a
group in west central Kansas.

This year, we had enough interest to add 6 more 1x1 calls (total of 51) for a
new spelling word, BISON, to go along with KANSAS, SUNFLOWER and QSOPARTY. It
turned out to be a little harder than usual this year. The Eclipse QSO Party
happened the weekend before and some of the calls we needed ran into our
weekend. Fortunately, everyone I asked was happy to drop a day or two to help
us out. With several last minute cancellations, I was still three calls short,
but that all changed at the Salina Hamfest when K0BJ, N0MXI, K0WA, AB0S and
AB0TX got their heads together and solved the problem. You all are great!

Saturday

With plenty of time for the route, Lorna and I got off a few minutes late with
our red lab, Roxxy, riding along in the back seat of the Chevy Astro van. I'm
still using the IC7000 on dedicated batteries and power booster to two Hustler
triples on triple mag mounts. Last year, I had forgotten to ground one of the
batteries which led to my radio shutting down on 40m. This year, everything
worked perfectly. I was able to use 15/20/40 and had a nice run on 80CW on
Saturday evening. 

XYL Lorna/k0why drove Saturday and even made a few contacts. Aaron/n0qd, my
Sunday driver, gave me permission to run his N0Q call as well so everyone had a
chance to work the call. That makes for less contacts with my primary call
(W0B), but it adds to the Q count for sure! The weather was fine, not too warm,
but propagation left a lot to be desired.

The route was a good one. I planned to extend the route into Jewell county, but
decided not to after ops reported good coverage there. We took our time and were
able to work down the pileups as we moved along. 15 was wide open for several
hours and a few ops like Jeff/N8II, took good advantage as we moved up for
quick 15CW and 15SSB Qs. I made a handful of Qs by CQing there, but even
spotting didn't seem to help on 15. I need to give a shout out to
Richard/K0RCJ, Kent/KB0RWI, and cwfun.org for setting up the great spotting
network. We've had it a few years already, but this year it really got used,
especially after I put it front and center on the KSQP web site home page.
Since self-spotting is allowed and encouraged, give it a try next year if you
didn't find it this year! I left it up for the moment so you can check it out.

The only glitch we had the entire day was flashing red and blues in the rear
view mirror as Lorna got pulled over in a small town up north somewhere (we
couldn't find it on the map later). As we stopped, I asked Lorna if we were
speeding and she said, "no."  Apparently the officer disagreed with
her, but after checking license, registration, and finding no tickets in
Lorna's record, he just asked a bunch of questions about what we were up to and
was quite impressed with what we were doing. No ticket, no warning. Just a
gentle reminder to watch our speed and we were on our way. How does Lorna do
that? The op who got ticketed twice in the same town last year is probably
shaking his head about now :-)

We got back to the house early, dropped off Lorna and Roxxy, and I finished out
the day with a nice 3 county line run a few miles from home. We ended the day
with 1222 combined Qs in the log, about 50 down from last year.

Sunday

Sunday morning, I got an email from Evert/KC0FUE, that he wasn't feeling well.
I volunteered to run his call (N0I) for him to put it on the air and we did
just that. Aaron/n0qd arrived ready to roll, and he remembered to pick up his
hat he left in the van a year ago!  Heading out to our first stop, radar showed
us running through a red thunderstorm line between Hesston and Salina. It also
showed we would run out of it on the other side. We did, but it dumped enough
rain that the dirt road to the 3 county line would have been too interesting.
I've learned my lesson in previous adventures! We settled for two counties
instead and we were off. What a difference a day made. Great signals and a
pileup almost immediately. It kept going that way the entire six hours. There
was lightning in the storm now south of us, but signals were so loud, it really
wasn't a problem.

Our scheduled furthest east county was Gove, then south to Lane county to give
John/n6mu one of the few he needed for another Sweep. The first road we turned
on to go south to Lane was gravel. The rain hadn't made it this far east, but
the idea of 25 miles on dusty gravel wasn't very appealing, so we continued on
to the highway 8 miles further east which headed to the town of Gove. Road
closed. The detour continued east on the freeway to the next highway south
which was just over the line into Logan county, then Scott, then finally Lane.
Since these were rarer counties and good highways, we decided to go with it and
continue the detour. John wondered why we gave him LOG instead of LAN, but once
I got on SSB, everyone knew what was happening. LAN finally appeared for John
to check off. As we eventually got back to the original highway, the detour
sign pointed north to the town of Gove. That was an almost 100 mile detour had
we wanted to get to Gove!

Aaron and I traded off driving so Aaron could work some nice SSB pileups and
give out all three calls. It's harder to explain three calls on CW, so at one
point, I put N0I/m on the air for the CW gang and got the biggest pileup of the
weekend! Everyone really is spelling those words and collecting 1x1 calls. The
only glitch was hitting what Aaron thought was a killdeer which flew up in
front of the van. At least it wasn't a pheasant which took off one of my
antennas a few years ago! We made it to Rush county with about 10 minutes to
go. I spent about 5 minutes on 40m, then gave equal time to the 20m gang to
finish out the run. The total Sunday mileage was 494 miles for six hours of
operating compared to 495 miles for 12 hours on Saturday. But, and this is a
big but, we almost doubled our QSO count in half the time, with an average rate
of 192 Qs/hr over the six hours. That's fun, and that's what we live for. Aaron
and I are still recovering!

Stats

We operated 16.7 hours, 989 miles, 2321 combined Qs, 428 unique calls (down 1
from last year), 7 dupes, one radio.

States not worked ------ : AK WY LA 
VE not worked ---------- : NS NT NB NU YT PE NL (one more than last year)
KS worked (5 counties) - : GLY REN MTN STE ATC
DX worked (6 countries)- : HK OM ZF DL F V31 (down 5 from last year)

Combined rate : 139/hr

Six-hour Rates
2017 rates adjusted for 16.7 hours of operating time (combined log)

--------------------- 2017--2016--2015--2014--2013--2012--2011--2010--2009
Saturday 1400-2000 --- 120 - 104 - 114 - 109 - 124 - 114 - 129 -- 86 - 145
Qs/hr
Saturday 2000-0200 --- 102 - 137 - 108 - 111 - 109 - 124 -- 86 -- 67 - 114
Qs/hr
Sunday   1400-2000 --- 192 - 192 - 101 - 127 - 172 - 134 - 106 - 123 - 164
Qs/hr

W0B/m County Breakdown (in visited order)

Saturday (495 miles)
01 MCP 52 McPherson
02 MRN 87 Marion
03 DIC 46 Dickinson
04 MOR 39 Morris
05 GEA 24 Geary
06 RIL 34 Riley
07 WAB 34 Wabaunsee
08 SHA 32 Shawnee
09 JEF 44 Jefferson
10 ATC 33 Atchison
11 DON 50 Doniphan
12 BRO 61 Brown
13 NEM 29 Nemaha
14 MSH 29 Marshall
15 WAS 34 Washington
16 REP 37 Republic
17 CLO 19 Cloud
18 OTT 29 Ottawa
19 SAL 15 Saline
20 HVY 45 Harvey

Sunday (494 miles)
21 LCN 55 Lincoln
22 ELS 48 Elsworth
23 RSL 42 Russell
24 ELL 38 Ellis
25 TRE 45 Trego
26 GOV 38 Gove
27 LOG 32 Logan
28 SCO 79 Scott
29 LAN 77 Lane
30 NES 73 Ness
31 RUS 10 Rush

Special thanks to the following ops for 6 or (way) more contacts:

74: N8II
67: N6MU
44: W7GDK
22: KS4X
20: K7SV
18: WZ6ZZ
17: K7IA
16: W7TR WA8REI
15: W7GF
14: W0ZQ
13: K3WJV
12: VE4EA
11: K7TM WA1SAY
10: K3TW K7YMA K9CW W2CVW W6OUL
09: K0CCM N9BD NW0M
08: K4BAI K4VBM W0RIC WX4G
07: AD0RW K2HVN K2RYD K4LNN K8NYG N2ZN VE5SDH W1END W5TM W6TDX W8BZY
06: AB9CA AC0CU N4EEV VE7CV W5CW W7OM WA6URY WD0T
05: 22 operators

1x1 stations worked (2) : K0Q N0A/M
Other Kansas worked (1) : W0GUY NB0Z

W0BH Award Winners - First Place - Very Honorable Mention
-----------------------------------------------------------
Most overall Qs ---- N8II/72 ----- N6MU/66 ------- W7GDK/44
Most CW Qs --------- N8II/38 ----- N6MU/35 ------- KS4X/17
Most PH Qs --------- N8II/34 ----- N6MU/31 ------- W7GDK/28
Most counties ------ N6MU/31 ----- N8II/W7GDK/27 - KS4X/18

There are lots of people to thank for the 2017 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 had three Kansas school stations
(Emporia State, K-State, KU) to thank as well as our non-1x1 Kansas stations,
many who have already turned in a log. Our mobiles and fixed stations covered
all 105 counties (already on Saturday). Preliminary reporting has N6MU with his
seventh sweep in a row, and N8II missed only one county. John reported working
all but a handful of counties with at least two different ops which is terrific
covereage. We also had a number of enthusiastic Kansas Rookies and five portable
stations joining us who represented Kansas well. Even though it's not in the
rules, I decided to offer a Kansas Portable plaque this year, then officially
add the category to next year's rules. We hope you all return!

Special thanks to our out-of-state mobiles Ron/ad0dx (now from CO), Bill/nu0q
(IA), Alan/n5na (TX), Connie/k5cm and Pam/n5kw (OK), Ron/af5q (TX), Don/k5db
(AR), Fred/kb0lf (NE), Mike/w0mb (MO), Bill/n0ac (IA) and Jerry/k5yaa (OK).
With our 5 intrepid in-state mobiles, that gave us fifteen mobiles this year
and 18 mobile callsigns. Thanks to our portable stations: Rick/nj0p,
Chuck/n0mxi and Greg/n0llc, Tanner/kd0irw, Rick/w0zap and Wayne/kd0wat and
Barb/kd0wau, and of course our many 1x1 Fixed stations who poured out the Qs.
As I mentioned in my article, we have Richard/k0rcj, Kent/kb0rwi, and the folks
at cwfun.org to thank for the spotting network. And thanks to Bruce/ki5te for
his continuing 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. If you 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 and Aaron for safely negotiating the
Kansas roads for me. And finally, thanks Kent/kb0rwi, for your great job on the
KSQP web site.

We also want to thank the Ohio and Hawaii QSO Parties for sharing the weekend
with us. It was fun putting OH in the log, and when I worked one of the big gun
Hawaii stations, he said "you must be from Kansas." I replied,
"Yup, we have 51 1x1 callsigns this weekend," to which he responded,
"I think I've worked at least half of them!" The Ohio stations for
the most part respected our mobile window, and I gave instructions to our
Kansas CW ops to stay low and out of the listed Ohio QSO Party frequencies. 

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 2018 Kansas QSO Party (our tenth anniversay
KSQP), or comments about this one are always welcome ... !

73, Bob/w0bh/w0b with Aaron/n0qd/n0q and Lorna/k0why
2017 KSQP Coordinator

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