[NCC] K8MAD NAQP SSB & Triple-Play Update

[Tim Duffy K3LR]

                 North American QSO Party, SSB

Call: K8MAD
Operator(s): K8CC, KD8FEJ, KE8OC, WB8VMN
Station: K8CC

Class: Multi Two LP
QTH: MI
Operating Time (hrs): 5:23
Exchange: MIKE MICH

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Mults
-------------------
  160:  100    34
   80:   77    36
   40:  178    45
   20:   19    10
   15:    4     2
   10:    1     1
-------------------
Total:  379   128  Total Score = 48,512

Club: Mad River Radio Club

This was not a very well organized contest effort.  When nobody from the
club would volunteer to come operate, I recruited
my brother Tom (WB8VMN), and his son Josh (KD8FEJ) to come out.  Tom has
been licensed almost as long as I, but hasn't been
very active on HF.  Josh has never been on HF, and I figured this would be a
good opportunity to get his feet wet.
Unfortunately, due to an important family commitment they could only stay
until 3:30 PM :-(  Tim, KE8OC volunteered to come
out around dinner time after his planned weekend chores were done, but he
wasn't feeling all that well so he left around 8:30
PM.  I operated some by myself, more to get Triple-Play states into the
K8MAD log more than anything else.

Tom has been working on a Windows-based logging program.  He first used it
in MiQP from his QTH, then KK8I and I used it from
here in OhQP back in August.  We thought this weekend would be another good
opportunity to wring it out.  However, being
Windows-based, we had to set up different computers (all the K8CC shack
logging computers are DOS-based) and this took longer
than expected, so we missed the first hour.  More seriously, one of the
Windows computers was a laptop and when it went into
hibernate mode it lost the log on that computer, causing about 50 75M QSOs
to go into the bit bucket.  The totals shown above
reflect QSOs that weren't lost.  We're still working to see if we can
retrieve the lost QSOs - if not, we'll not submit the log so that 50
innocent stations won't get dinged with NIL ("not-in-log") penalties.

I thought conditions were even worse than the CW weekend.  When you're
running stacked 5L yagis on 20M and W6s CQ in your face,
conditions suck.  Just like CW, both 40M and 80M went long early, and as a
result we didn't hear (or work) many MRRCers.  (I think we only worked three
OH stations all weekend, and I had one reasonably big gun thank me profusely
for the MI multiplier).  OTOT, the long skip probably helped us work not one
but two Alaskans on 40M.  Condx on 160M were pretty good, but I got ran off
of a couple of frequencies by rag-chewers running high power.  I eventually
settled in on 1869 (only 4 KHz above the recommended activity frequency of
1865) but it was disappointing because it appeared that most people did not
tune up that high.

OTOH, it was a pretty good weekend for the K8MAD Triple-Play WAS effort.  I
am pleased to report that we were able to work all 50 states this past
weekend on phone, the log is already uploaded to LoTW and 40 states are
already confirmed on phone.  As of Sunday evening, here is where we stand:

CW:   47 confirmed - missing LA, HI and ND
SSB:  40 confirmed - missing CT, VT, HI, MT, OR, WV, ND, NE, SD
RTTY: 39 confirmed - missing VT, AK, MT, NV, WY, WV, IL, WI, MO, ND, NE

That's 126 confirmed out of 150, ot 84%.  Additional states may get
confirmed as more stations upload their logs to LoTW.  Thus far, we're
getting a pretty decent return.  We have 1,984 K8MAD QSOs in LoTW since the
beginning of this year, and 952 confirmations, a rate of 48%.

Jim, K8SIA has agreed to keep chasing states on RTTY to try to get them all.
If another club member would like to work on the remaining CW and/or phone
states, please drop me a note and we'll coordinate authorizing the use of
the callsign.  We only need 24 more, so with a little on the air time we
should be able to wrap it up.  The NAQP RTTY QSO Party in late February, and
the CQ 160M CW and phone contests would be great opportunities.  If anyone
in the club would be willing to put K8MAD on their for these events please
let me know.  The only limitation is that you need to be within 25 miles of
the K8MAD QTH of record.

One last thing.  I would like to thank all the club members from both MRRC
and NCC who honored our friend Mike Socha, W8UA by using the name "MIKE" in
the NAQP this past weekend.  I suspect that many of you might not have known
Mike that well, but your willingness to honor him was deeply appreciated by
those of us who knew him well.

73,

Dave/K8CC