[MiQP-Mail] Ramblings

Todd Fonstad tfonstad at earthlink.net
Tue Apr 12 19:35:46 CDT 2005


Greetings!

Time's getting short and I'm ready to take a drive up to Iron River Friday 
for the start of the MiQP the next day.

As solo mobile, I will run the following rare (!?!) western U.P. counties in 
order: IRON, GOGE, ONTO, HOUG, BARA, MARQ, DICK. About an hour and 20 
minutes will be spent parked in each county, and I'll be on the road (NOT 
operating) a bit under three hours total. 20M and 40M CW will be the 
workhorse bands, but I'll also S&P as well as "run" (if I can!) on SSB on 
those bands. Eighty meters will be added in the evening. I think it was K8MR 
who suggested I make more than one operating stop in each county, and I am 
inclined to try that out.

WX forecast for my home QTH in Oshkosh is for T-storms Saturday, but the 
outlook for the U.P. is without the electricity so far: 36 to 62 degrees and 
afternoon rain.  That will change (after all, the NWS is a non-prophet 
organization), but at least for the moment there's no mention of an 
impending  s--w  s---m!! Shhhhhh!!

Most of the snow is apparently gone from all but the deep woods in the U.P., 
so maybe I'll be able to back into one of the forest roads off Highway 2 
without getting stuck in snow, ice, or mud as almost happened last year.

With the price of gasoline as it is, perhaps the committee could institute 
another award: QSO's per gallon or some such .......

I received several excellent replies to my query about how mobilers run both 
40 SSB and CW without incurring unacceptable losses on both segments of the 
band. Several of you suggested using a Ham Stick tuned to a fq between the 
two. As I use the Hustler arrangement, I took a 30 meter resonator and added 
a longer stinger. I tuned this to resonance at about 7.140 MHz, and it 
measure less than 2:1 at 7.050 and 7.225. The standard 40M coil with the 
shorter stinger has a narrower 2:1 fq range. Thanks for the idea!

I have two questions regarding the NA program which I use to log on my 
laptop in the van:

1. Is there any way that the "cursor" can be enlarged to be more visible in 
the high light intensities that are encountered during the day? I can't see 
where I am in the current QSO field half the time. Could it be my eyes?!? I 
like the big, bold cursor in the N3FJP logger but for various reasons I much 
prefer Dave's program.

2. Is there a way to "make" NA "remember" the SPC of stations logged while 
in a previous county? My currently-running GOGE file, for example, doesn't 
have access to this information from the just-completed IRON file, does it? 
Any ideas?

Finally, good hunting all!

73
Todd
N9NE/M/MI










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