Florida QSO Party
Call: K4OJ/M
Operator(s): N4KM, K1TO
Station: K4OJ/M
Class: M/SCW LP
QTH: 51 ctys
Operating Time (hrs): 20
Summary:
Band CW Qs Ph Qs
--------------------
40: 464
20: 2012
15: 0
10: 0
--------------------
Total: 2476 0 CW Mults = 65 Ph Mults = 0 Total Score = 643,760
Club: Florida Contest Group
Comments:
Thanks to Kevin, N4KM for providing the Nissan Exterra, IC-706, Hamsticks and
laptop running CT/DOS. This set-up has hosted K4OJ himself and K0LUZ in past
years. OJ passed away in Feb, 2004, so this was already the 5th FQP without
him and we know the activity level would please him -- thanks to all who got
on. It was very special to work Ellen, W1YL/6 who was attending Visalia this
year (she broke through the pile much easier than seasoned contest vet K7JA for
some reason!).
Despite a traffic jam in Tampa that caused us to run ~15 minutes behind all day
Saturday, we managed to fully cover our ambitious 51-county route with at least
5 minutes per county and no unsafe speeding. We did miss two turns Sunday AM
that also put us behind by ~15 minutes, but we easily made up the time by
reducing our stop time in a few later counties. We still spent at least 13
minutes in every Sunday county. The only other glitch was when K1TO
inadvertently switched the antenna switch to the "no antenna" position with his
foot, causing 5 minutes of worthless CQing.
Conditions seemed better to us on Saturday. Sunday started very slowly,
although we suspect that other mobiles that we could not hear might've been
sharing 7029 with us. Seems that we need to alter the 40 CW mobile window,
since most of the activity from ~20 mobiles was crammed into 7025-7030. Not
sure why, as NO5W has fared very well on or about 7024 the past 2 years...
We did spot Chuck twice as we leapfrogged each other early Sunday and we also
spotted a white car sporting FQP-like tendencies in GIL on Saturday. We're
grateful that so many mobiles did go out anyway, despite ever-rising gas
prices. With so many mobiles to choose from, we felt like activity was spread
out a bit more, with less of the snarling pile-ups when first entering a
county. We'd love to read about signal comparisons between the mobiles if
anyone has a Skimmer printout or something!
We very much enjoyed K5KG & XYL Kay hosting a pre-FQP BBQ with attendees that
included team KG (+VE7ZO), team OJ, K8NZ & XYL Angela, and W4IX and XYL
Melissa. We met up with Team KG again near Jacksonville for dinner Saturday
and breakfast Sunday, since our hotels were only a few hundred yards apart!
We had 1240 QSOs on Saturday and 1236 QSOs on Sunday. We missed the 15M
opening altogether and probably could've taken better advantage of 40M, but 20
was certainly steady. We held to 14049 for our 2000+ QSOs on 20. 20 seemed to
stay open quite a bit later than it did last year.
Mults: Missed DC, ID, AK and ND in the USA; VO, VE5, VE6, VE8 and YT in
Canada. From memory, DX mults worked were: CT, CU, CX, DL, EA, G, HA, I, KP4,
OM, PY, VP9 and XE.
Only three stations asked us for QSYs to SSB and we apologize for declining.
It looks like there was very solid county coverage again this year on both
modes, both from fixed stations and from mobiles.
We've already received logs from 237 entrants, so the hope is for another
record log and QSO count in 2008. Many of these are first-time entrants, so
this event continues to attract attention and additional activity. Thanks
again to all who made the time to get on!
73/OJ, Dan, K1TO
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.hornucopia.com/3830score/
______________________________________________
3830 mailing list
3830@contesting.com
http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/3830
|