Minnesota QSO Party
Call: W0ZQ
Operator(s): W0ZQ
Station: W0ZQ
Class: Rover LP
QTH: MN
Operating Time (hrs):
Summary:
Band CW-RTTY Qs Ph Qs
-------------------------
160:
80: 105
40: 370 2
20: 191 4
15:
10:
-------------------------
Total: 666 6 Mults = 80 Total Score = 107,520
Club: Northern Lights Radio Society
Comments:
The quarantine of my mobile seemed to have worked towards avoiding the Murphy
bug that hit our mobile group hard this year. Only one minor Murphy-like story
to tell. By mid-morning I noticed that the charge symbol on my lap top wasn't
ON indicating I was operating on batteries. Hmmm. A check of the computer
charger jack showed the charger cord was plug in. I looked in the accessory
slot and I could see that the charger was inserted into the ACC power outlet
and was illuminated, so what was the deal? I had perhaps another hour of
battery life before the lap top would die and I wasn't looking forward to pen
and paper. I pulled out my volt meter and checked the voltage on the power plug
going into the computer and sure enough, no juice there yet the power plug was
illuminated. Maybe a bad wire? So I pulled on the power plug (those who mobile
know how many cables there are in a mobile setup!) and after running the cord
down, out came an entirely different power plug. Huh. It seemed that I had
plugged my extra cell phone power charger into the ACC outlet, that was what
was illuminated, and not the computer charger power plug. Whew. After
unplugging the cell phone charger and plugging in the computer charger, the
computer greeted me with a happy "charging" symbol. Other than that,
no problems to report.
I decided to make this a relaxing drive, so no SSB while I was driving. The
roads were clear this year, starting temperature of 19, ending around 30 with
mostly sunny skies. The mid-day wind was very strong, probably sustained around
25 with higher gust. Otherwise the road and weather conditions were about as
good as you can get for MN in Feb. Propagation wise, it was a strange day.
There were times when the bands seemed to be coming back, then there were times
on 40m that I thought that I was the only one on. 80m at the start produced some
Q's, but dwindled quickly so I did not revisit it until towards the end. Of my
672 Q's, 105 were on 80m (15%), 373 on 40m (55%) and 195 on 20m (30%). Never
heard any short(er) skip on 20m; no IL, OH, etc.
The 80m pile-up's at the end of the day from MRT and WAT were a bit hard for me
to handle. I think with age my fingers have gotten bigger and the keyboard
smaller as I could not believe how many calls I "fat fingered". It
doesn't help that its at the end of a long day and getting dark (ie, hard to
see the keyboard). Also, as a mobile/rover, I plead that guys spread out just a
few tens of hertz (or more) as the spots put everyone on the same freq. Guys who
got through the best were fast, crisp and slightly off freq, plus had good
timing.
I had 19 DX Q's. Of those, 13 were with OM2VL (8 on 20m, 3 on 40m, and 2 on
80m), with other 20m Q's with DK2OY, DL3GA, SM6BGG, and UA3AGW. Some of the MN
and state-side Q's were mere whispers; call sign recognition is good for about
6 dB.
Here are the number of Q's from each county and in the order of activation:
BRO(36), RDW(51), COT(48), MUR(55), LYO(44), LIN(42), PIP(48), ROC(58),
NOB(80), JAC(57), MRT(75), and WAT(78). Lincoln and Rock counties were two new
ones for me on my quest to operate from all 87 in the MnQP; only 28 more to
go.
Thanks for all the Q's and a full day of radio !
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.3830scores.com/
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