California QSO Party
Call: K6S
Operator(s): K6III, KQ6LQ, K6ENT, N6DE
Station:
Class: Cnty Exped Power: HP
QTH: SIE
Operating Time (hrs): 22.5
Summary:
Band CW Qs Ph Qs Mults
-----------------------------------
160:
80: 24 59
40: 62 100
20: 160 374
15: 296 356
10: 166 270
6:
2:
-----------------------------------
Total: 708 1159 58 = 257,636
Club:
Comments:
Equipment:
Icom IC-751A
Kenwood TS-850
Icom IC-2KL
Heathkit SB-200
Force12 C3S on a 72 foot tower trailer
Force12 C3S on a Force12 42 foot LPT1242 tower
Wire dipoles in trees for 40m, 75m SSB, and 80m CW
Networked laptops running Writelog
ICE bandpass filters
Soapbox:
The goal of this operation was to have fun and
make Sierra County easier to contact than it has been
in the past. Jerry K6III and Terry KQ6LQ have operated
from Sierra County for the past few years. Last year they operated
QRP with a wire in the trees, and got 321 QSOs. While
they had fun, they were a little discouraged that many stations
had a hard time contacting Sierra County for the sweep.
Kent K6ENT and I have operated from Mariposa County
the past three years, and wanted to try something new this year.
Jerry invited us to join forces and make some noise from
Sierra County. Over the past six years in CQP, no operation
from Sierra County has totaled more than 450 QSOs.
We hope we succeeded in our goal, as we more than
quadrupled that QSO mark this year.
We set up at a ridge top at about 5000 feet elevation
in southwest Sierra County near the small town of Pike.
The site was remote and beautiful, with a stunning
downslope toward the east. Although it appeared that
part of the area had been used as a primitive camping
site in the past, Jerry and Terry mentioned that they had
never seen anyone visit in any of the years they used
this location....... until this year! Several vehicles passed
through the "road" (very narrow strip of uneven ground
topped off with millions of large rocks). Most were hunters
or people cutting/logging wood. We heard gun shots
the entire weekend, and guessed (hoped) that deer season
might be the reason. We were even asked for a tour of
our site by a family and their two kids! We gave them the whole
run down of ham radio, antennas, equipment, emergency
preparedness, morse code, etc. I found that they had a better
grasp of amateur radio than many of the technical experts I work
with in the Silicon Valley! I never imagined we would be conducting
tours of our site from such a remote area!
This was a fun, laid back, M/2 operation. Even though we set
up two stations, we often left one or both stations unattended.
The idea was to have two stations so that all of us could get
in as much operating time as we wanted to, but didn't feel
pressured to stay at the controls all 30 hours. We broke
away for lunch/dinner/motorcycle riding/hiking/etc
whenever we wanted, and decided to sleep through the night.
Jerry, Kent, and I left at 6 a.m. Friday and reached the site
by noon. Terry joined us later in the afternoon. Before
darkness, we were able to get up both of the towers and
beams, and part of the 40m dipole. On Saturday, we
started a little late, and throughout the day, installed the
dipoles in the trees. Kent's potato gun was definitely the
hit of the weekend! It is simply more fun to erect dipoles
with a potato gun as opposed to a bow and arrow
or slingshot! How many CQP expeditions list a potato gun,
an air compressor, and a 10 lb. bag of U.S. #1 Russet potatoes
as standard equipment?
Our apologies to those stations who tried to find us on
80m CW and could not hear us. Our 80m CW dipole
gave us infinite VSWR, so we had to load our 80m SSB
dipole and turned off the amp.
Hawaii was our last mult for the sweep. Kent K6ENT
heard KH6HAM calling someone on 20m SSB Saturday
evening. Kent immediately moved up a few kHz and started
calling CQ. KH6HAM answered the CQ and gave us
serial number 3 for the sweep! Sounds like a veteran
contest move to me!
K9ZO called Kent on 20m SSB about 20 minutes before
the end of the contest, noticing that we just needed QSOs
on 10m and 20m CW for a 10-80m sweep. I was loading
my truck at the time when I heard Kent yell for me.
I ran over and completed the two CW QSOs for a 10 QSO
sweep! That was fun!
Thanks go to: K6III and KQ6LQ for inviting Kent and I to
join them this year; W6YX and K6EEN for the use of an
Icom handheld; all the school stations that were on the
air this year; and everyone for the QSOs which made this
an extremely fun and successful expedition!
QSL via K6III.
73...
-Dean - N6DE
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