Texas QSO Party - 2023
Call: WB0TEV
Operator(s): WB0TEV
Station: WB0TEV
Class: Mobile SO SSB LP
QTH:
Operating Time (hrs): 18
Summary:
Band CW Qs Ph Qs Dig Qs
----------------------------
160:
80:
40: 15
20: 284
15:
10:
6:
2:
UHF:
----------------------------
Total: 0 299 0 Mults = 40 Total Score = 58,920
Club: DFW Contest Group
Comments:
900 miles of Texas highways, $200 in gasoline, 46 counties and loads of fun and
adventure.
In years past, I’ve done a solo SSB effort and taken top honors for TXM PHO
several times. Last year, I laid the mic aside and took my good friend and
skilled CW op K5PS for a ride across Texas in a TXM CWO effort, albeit for less
than the full 18 hours.
This year the plan was a full on 18 hour effort across 46 counties with the two
of us taking turns on the radio. Scott would do CW only as K5PS and I would do
SSB only as WB0TEV, albeit with priority given to K5PS. I would do all the
driving, Scott would run the logging computer.
I don’t think either of us took 1st place this year. If you are going to beat
super mobile ops like AD4EB on CW you need to not have to share the radio with
an SSB op and indeed set up for SO2R. AD4EB AVERAGED 2.7 QSO’s/minute over
the entire 18 hours! He’s a machine!
Nonetheless we had a blast, and I don’t think anybody activated more counties
this year than we did. Scott managed to secure the 1000 point bonus from each
of our 46 counties, while I managed to do so from 35 on SSB.
Hopefully Scott will get a chance to do his own writeup, but as he is busy
getting ready for family coming to visit later this week, his report may be
delayed.
The original plan was to again drive my antenna festooned 1986 Pontiac
Parisienne as we did last year. Unfortunately, or fortunately as the case may
be, the Thursday before the contest the old girl suddenly developed major
electrical issues and died in my driveway. Better then and there than 150 miles
from home in the middle of Texas nowhere on a Saturday afternoon. I think
either a fusible link from the main + cable from the battery blew or perhaps the
ground cable from the battery went out. In any case, I didn’t really have
time to troubleshoot it or get it in and out of the shop, so I moved radio gear
to my 2008 Chevy Tahoe that I’d used along with Scott in the 2021 Oklahoma QSO
party.
While I can use the long Hustler vertical on the fender of the Pontiac, on the
Tahoe I have to use a short Hustler vertical with a mag mount on the roof, which
isn’t as efficient and has an even narrower bandwidth. Since I was planning
on doing both SSB and CW on this trip I was going to have to use an antenna
tuner anyway. Electrically short antennas have a pretty narrow bandwidth
(unless they are just excessively lossy) so I couldn’t get an acceptable VSWR
in both the CW and SSB segments simultaneously. By setting the resonant points
on the 40, 20 and 15m elements in the digi band between CW and SSB I was able to
fairly easily get a good match to the radio using the MFJ-949D tuner. A motor
driven screw-driver type antenna would be another solution, but not one I have
in my current arsenal.
Unlike the Pontiac setup, I found that 15m in the Tahoe got so much RFI into the
CAT cable going to the FT757GXII radio that it would scramble its poor brains
requiring a reset which involves fumbling around on the back of the radio to
push in a couple of buttons to reset the memories and microprocessor. I had a
ferrite on the laptop end of that cable, but apparently need to choke the
daylights out of it on the radio end too. I have ground straps made of salvaged
coax shield running from the radio, tuner, and laptop to a single point ground
by the gas pedal as well. Running out of time, I opted to just forgo 15m and
stick with 20 and 40.
Saturday morning we started at the 3 county intersection of Hunt, Fannin and
Delta counties about 25 miles from Greenville, Texas the home QTH for both Scott
and I. We started out with me on SSB on 20m. Often when entering a new county,
I would operate SSB just long enough to work get the 5 QSOs necessary to secure
the 1000 point bonus for activating that county (or work the pile down if there
was one) then give it over to K5PS who would close N1MM+ and relaunch it using a
separate desktop icon that would bring up his database and log. We had
budgeted 25 minutes at that corner and after he worked down a CW pile we still
had time to turn me loose on 40m SSB for a bit where I worked my good friend and
old college room mate KK5MR up in Grayson county along with the sorely missed
W0BH up in KS who for many years came down to Texas to run the panhandle
counties.
Then it was time to motor on down the road headed eastward gobbling up the
counties and often popping in and out of the northern most tier of counties just
long enough to activate them (e.g. Lamar, Red River, Bowie).
Unfortunately when we got to Gregg county, Murphy paid a visit. The radio got
quiet and the VSWR started jumping all over the place. We pulled over to
troubleshoot and the trouble *SEEMED* to be in the wafer switch in the tuner.
At that point I decided to just bypass the tuner, but that meant I had to
readjust the lengths of the antenna stingers to get them naturally resonant in
the CW portion of the band, thus seemingly putting an end to my SSB efforts for
the rest of the contest.
After losing about 30 minutes and falling behind our time line by about the same
we got back on the road. There would be no SSB from Gregg, Harrison or Rusk
counties. Somewhere about half past RUSK it finally dawned on me that the
flakiness in the tuner’s antenna switch was likely only in the COAX 2
positions that we had been using. If I moved the antenna coax to COAX 1 and
used that input I might avoid the problem and sure enough when we tried it that
worked (or at least it would for a while). So we stopped and I readjusted the
antenna lengths back to where they originally had been and we were off again.
However, we were still behind schedule. When we got to Panola county I got back
on SSB, K5PS spotted me and I called desperately on 20m SSB hoping especially
for KK7AC as I knew he need Panola for his county hunting totals. Alas, the
QSO’s just were not forthcoming around 2230Z and I gave up after getting only
3 QSO and gave the radio back to K5PS.
In an attempt to make up for lost time I didn’t do any SSB from Shelby,
Sabine, San Augustine or Nacogdoches counties. Some of these only took just a
few minutes to drive across or in and out of, so rather than spend the full 16
minutes I had budgeted in such cases, as soon as Scott made enough QSOs to get
the bonus we just kept on moving down the road rather than stopping. Using that
strategy we eventually made up for lost time and got back on our time line.
Trimming some time off of our allotted pit stop time in Lufkin (Angelina county)
also helped.
As we approached the Angelina/Trinity county line after the gas/potty stop in
Lufkin I felt we had enough time margin to let me do a quick county line run on
SSB. If you are going to pack as many counties in as we did you generally have
to keep moving and not stop on county lines or you run out of time before you
run through the counties. The exception is at the very beginning and end of the
day or if/when you get sufficiently ahead of your time line that you can stop
for a bit.
Fortunately prop had improved and I had a frantic pile going on 14236 in short
order. One thing that threw us was N5MLP. He reported his state as GA, but we
had previously logged him as being in CO. We asked him and he replied that he
was using various remote stations and that’s why he gave different state
reports just hours apart! That was certainly a new wrinkle.
The drive through Cherokee county was a slog. At 48 minutes or so, it took the
longest to get through.
When we got to the Anderson/Henderson county line I judged that we could afford
to do a quick SSB county line run which would allow me to knock off two counties
quickly, especially since the drive time through the corner of Henderson would
only take about 5 minutes and I wanted Scott to have a chance to bank that early
if he could, even though we would have a second pass through Henderson on
Sunday.
A great pileup ensued before we switched to CW and motored across Henderson and
into Smith county. Despite the short time, K5PS managed to get >5 QSOs in
before we crossed into Smith.
Saturday night in the closing minutes we approached the county line of our last
two counties, Wood and Rains in the small town of Alba. Scott knocked out Wood
and then we crossed just barely into Rains where he worked enough to get the
bonus for it too. Then with 17 minutes to go I positioned us on the county
line, got on 20 SSB and quickly worked 9 QSOs from each county including OM2VL
who is one of the more prolific European contestants in state QSO parties. Its
always good to hear Laci booming in from Slovakia.
There were still 12 minutes left in the contest so gave in back to K5PS to work
some more CW from Rains county as we motored up US69 to get back home to
Greenville for the night.
Sunday morning I again picked up K5PS and we headed for our start point of
Collin/Rockwall. At 1400Z I started off on 40 SSB and after a few QSOs there
went to 20m SSB. After working a few more and banking the bonus the radio went
to K5PS to work the county line for a bit before we motored down in Rockwall on
the way to Dallas county. I tried 20m SSB from Dallas but struck out. I did
manage a county line run from Ellis/Johnson from a liquor store parking lot.
Did a brief run while rolling through McLennan, had to skip Hill, but managed 6
quick QSOs from Fall and later a county line run from Limestone/Robertson which
was made possible by the short path we had through both of those counties (11
and 9 miles respectively) which made the 32 minutes budgeted for them more than
enough to let us stop and park for a bit.
The next 4 counties (Leon, Freestone, Navarro and a 2nd visit to Henderson),
were long drives relatively speaking, so there was time for me to get on SSB and
still give K5PS time to hit both 20 and 40, although for what ever reason I
never got on from Freestone as we zipped up I-45. Maybe I was focused on driving
and making up some time.
When we got to the last county line we did much the same as we did at the end of
Saturday. K5PS knocked out Kaufman county in the 3 miles we spent cutting
across its SE corner in Mabank Texas, then crossed just a bit into Van Zandt
county so he could score that one. With about 20 minutes left in the contest I
got on the county line, found what sounded like a quiet spot on 14256 (per my
advertisement on my qrz.com page I tried to gravitate towards freqs that ended
in 6) had myself spotted and called, ….and called…. and a called.
Crickets.
QSY’ed to 14296, had Scott re-spot me and this time a pile thankfully ensued.
Many of those who had worked me from multiple counties got their last QSO’s
with WB0TEV. There was still 15 minutes left so gave the radio back to K5PS and
he worked CW as we drove north further into Van Zandt until the contest ended.
An hour later we were back home, road weary but gratified.
Thanks for the SSB QSOs with WB0TEV and CW QSOs with K5PS. I managed to
activate 35 counties, while Scott activated all 46. See you next year in some
form and possibly in the OKQP in March. Now, I need to go have a talk with the
Pontiac…. And thank the Tahoe for pinch hitting this year.
73, Victor (WB0TEV)
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