[MiQP-Mail] K8K/m MiQP Report
Jimk8mr at aol.com
Jimk8mr at aol.com
Mon Apr 23 12:21:50 CDT 2007
K8K 2007 Michigan QSO Party K8MR, W8DRZ operators:
CW SSB
80 69 17
40 392 63
20 253 23
Tot 714 103
S/P 44 23
Cty 19 7
Score: 142,383
By county, in order first activated:
CW SSB
SAGI 8 0
TUSC 43 3
HURO 40 3
BAY 42 6
MIDL 34 5
ISAB 36 2
CLAR 22 10
GLAD 39 7
AREN 42 3
IOSC 57 4
OGEM 38 3
ROSC 27 3
CRAW 26 4
KALK 32 1
MISS 21 5
WEXF 23 5
OSCE 36 2
MECO 13 6
LAKE 14 11
NEWA 12 1
MCLM 29 11
KENT 27 2
GRAT 11 2
CLIN 9 2
SHIA 19 1
INGH 5 1
LIVI 9 0
This was not the usual well practiced K8MR/M operation.
I have everything well tweaked on the 1996 Ford Windstar, all loaded and at
2 pm on Friday headed off to pick up W8DRZ. I had to make one stop at the
local bank. When I came out from that, the van never seemed to get running right.
Half a mile down the road it was clear that it was having major trouble, and
in another half mile if died in the middle of the road, a quarter mile from
home. Bad news, but thank God it was not in the middle of Kalkaska county
that it decided to die.
I called AAA and an hour later a tow truck showed up. I had him haul it to
my usual garage, and followed him there in my other car, a 1998 Ford Escort.
Not surprisingly, they could not get it in that afternoon, so I proceeded to
unload the van into the Escort and headed home.
At that point, the inspiration of Ethan, K8GU took over. Knowing that he
had run a couple of mobile QSO parties in WI and/or MN with his Escort, I
decided it was worth a try.
I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening turning the Escort into a
mobile radio station. I installed the mag mounts on the roof and trunk, connected
some ground wiring between the antennas and the car frame, connected the
trunk lid to the frame, hooked the power cable removed from the van to the
Escort battery, running that through the driver door opening. Got the Ham Sticks
tuned OK. Then to make an operating position. I found a piece of plywood used
in an earlier van operating table, nailed a 2x4 to make a single leg, and
balanced that between that one leg, the corner of the folded down back seat, the
back of the front seat, and the door. It wasn't great, but it held the
laptop and K9LU paddle. It was the best I could do on short notice.
After some not very good sleep, I got up at 5 am Saturday and left home
about 6 am. Got to Jim/DRZ's QTH about 7 am. Loaded his stuff, set up his GPS,
and were ready to set off again. The Escort would not start. Dead battery.
Headed off to find the local auto pasts store. Not open until 7:30. Went back to
DRZ land, took out the dead battery, went back to the store, got battery,
back to DRZ, put in battery, left about 8 am.
Again, the good news was that this did not happen parked in the middle of
nowhere in Michigan.
It was about a 4 1/2 hour drive to our planned starting point in Huron
county. We could see that we were not going to quite make that, so we modified our
route, heading east from Saginaw to start in SAGI, then through TUSC to our
original planned starting point in HURO.
In SAGI the bands sounded pretty flat. Nothing in close on 40, not much on
20. We spent only a few minutes before heading off. In TUSC we started
working people reasonably well, and in HURO had some small pileups. For much of the
day 40 was mediocre, but 20 produced very nicely, with a combination of DX,
western USA and FL stations.
We got into a good routine with K5YAA, KU8E, N6MU, and WA3HAE of switching
to SSB. Most of those were pretty polite about waiting until the pileups
subsided, though HAE just asked for SSB whenever he worked us. It turned out to be
not so bad, because several times we dragged some extra guys up to SSB who I
doubt we would have found otherwise. I never got much going as far as
running on SSB, but did get a number of people to QSY from CW for SSB mults.
Thanks to guys like VE1WT, VE9DX, N1IW, K4AMC, WA3GNW, N8NA, W0JPL for helping
out. Missed a few other potential SSB mults with guys who were only CW or
otherwise could not QSY. Later in the evening I had some luck on 40 SSB, including
W1WIU in RI calling in on SSB, from where we moved to CW.
The rates during much of the day were such that I was thinking it was
possible to break my 2004 record of 1052 qsos, although I knew the mults were going
to be bad. However, that year I averaged over 100/hr for the last 4 hours.
This year the bands just died too early, so no such luck.
So the MiQP adventure in the Escort turned out fine. It wasn't as
comfortable, but I think the noise level may have been better than in the van. The $600
to replace the alternator, battery, and belt tensioner in the van did not
make me happy. I did not mind the Escort battery, since that one was original
equipment and due for a new one. We did save a little gas with the Escort.
Thanks to all who followed us around Michigan. See you in the Ohio QSO
Party on Saturday, August 25.
73 - Jim & Jim K8MR & W8DRZ
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