7th Call Area QSO Party - 2019
Call: N7WA
Operator(s): N7WA
Station: N7WA
Class: SO MobileCW LP
QTH:
Operating Time (hrs): 16
Summary:
Band CW Qs Ph Qs Dig Qs
----------------------------
160: 0
80: 53
40: 184
20: 160
15: 6
10: 0
6: 0
2: 0
----------------------------
Total: 403 0 0 Mults = 48 Total Score = 58,032
Club: Western Washington DX Club
Comments:
This year, my wife Diane decided to accompany me on my journey around eastern
Washington. I hope she enjoyed it. The scenery was nice as usual and the weather
was fine though it had to be boring for her at each stop. However, she came
repared with books, tablet, and music.
We started way up north of Grand Coulee Dam and worked our way slowly through
the
center of the dry side with a jog to the southeast. I tried one new county line
combination (Grant/Lincoln) just west of Odessa. It was a good choice and I’ll
keep it in mind for the future. We even reserved time for a nice lunch in
Ritzville. (By myself, I would have just kept going and I could probably have
slipped in one more county.)
Propagation wasn’t that bad considering the point in the solar cycle but I was
surprised when both Japan and France showed up. Then, there was the totally
unexpected solar flare with put a definite crimp in my operations from Columbia,
Walla Walla, and Franklin counties. I didn’t know about the flare until I got
home but I thought something strange was going on at the time. Bad enough being
mobile – never mind dealing with the effects of a propagation brown out. I
think I could have put another 100 in the log without the flare.
Fortunately, after it cleared up, it was gangbusters from the hills of Benton
and Klickitat counties. Forty was hot as a pistol and eighty made a good showing
after dusk. We called it quits about 10PM local with an estimated 3 hour trip
home. I figured Diane had been a good sport and it had been a long day split
between 8 hours of drive time and 8 hours of operating. It gets really dark in
the hills of
Klickitat - too bad the skies weren’t quite clear enough for a good view of
the stars.
No real equipment issues. I did find that the combination I was using to charge
the new laptop had noise on 20M – it was fine at home. It wasn’t a real
consideration since I only charged while driving between stops. I’ll play with
some ferrites to see if I can fix that. I have two antennas, one is a big bug
catcher I normally mount on some copper pipe. Never was strong enough and kept
working loose. This time, I tried out a solid one inch aluminum rod drilled,
tapped, with a grade 8 bolt insert to hold the coil. Solid as a rock all day.
Learned my lesson from last year when I pushed too hard as a mobile single op.
Too much driving – too little operating. I saw myself scheduling it that way
this year as well and forced myself to back off. We only did 14 counties in all
but I had way more fun this year.
See you in the Salmon Run...
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