Florida QSO Party
Call: W1NN/M
Operator(s): W1NN
Station: W1NN
Class: SO MobileMixed LP
QTH: 23 FL Counties
Operating Time (hrs): 20
Summary:
Band CW Qs Ph Qs
--------------------
40: 174 1
20: 1826 58
15: 13 1
10: 0 0
--------------------
Total: 2013 60 CW Mults = 69 Ph Mults = 27 Total Score = 784,512
Club: Mad River Radio Club
Comments:
Mobiling in the 2005 FQP (Very Long)
I had been wanting to try my hand at mobiling in the FQP ever since the Florida
Contest Group resurrected the event in 1998. From that first Party eight years
ago, mobiles have played the key role in activating counties and making the
contest interesting to out-of-staters and I thought it would be a lot of fun
competing with the large number of mobiles they manage to field every year. I
had actually purchased air tickets to Florida twice in recent years that I was
unable to use because of last-minute business commitments. 2005 was to be the
year that I finally made it.
The reason to go all the way to Florida to operate as a mobile may be summed up
in one word: pileups. The pileups experienced by the FQP mobiles as they change
counties have become nearly legendary. The top multi-single mobiles during the
2003 FQP saw average rates of around 130/hour for the entire 20 hours of the
contest. These are similar to the rates experienced by top DX stations in the
top DX contests. Another reason I wanted to participate was that the FQP
recently created a new mobile category for solo ops who handle both the
operating and the driving by themselves. Since this is my preferred operating
method, this new category was very appealing to me, since in most other QSO
parties (Michigan is the main exception) I end up competing with two-man teams.
As anyone who has entered the mobile category in a QSO party will tell you,
preparation is the secret to doing well. Not only do you have to get the
station working perfectly - no easy matter when your antenna is just a couple of
feet from your operating position and RF is flying everywhere - but you also
must plan a route that fits your operating category and style. There are many
things that can go wrong and ruin your effort. Being something of a
procrastinator, many of my mobile operations over the years have been rather
last-minute affairs where many things have gone wrong, so I know.
But this year I had the best possible preparation - operating the Michigan QSO
Party one-week prior to the FQP. True to form, my MIQP operation was one of
those last minute affairs and I did indeed have some problems, but it was very
helpful in allowing me to identify problem areas. I had a couple of fairly free
days in between the MIQP and the FQP, so I was able to sort out most of these
problems prior to departing for FL.
I operated both contests using rental cars. I made sure that I got the same
make and model car in Florida that I had in MI so that I could hook everything
the same way. Outfitting a car for mobiling is no easy chore. You have to hook
up the power cable direct to the battery, route it inside to the rig, find a
good ground (difficult with many late-model cars), build a stable operating
desk, tape up and place the magnet mounts so that they do not damage the car
finish, prepare some kind of light for after-dark operating, and many other
tasks. This time I was able to take the entire station out of the Michigan car
and put it into the suitcase for Florida, wrapping everything in about three
layers of bubble wrap. I included two magnet mounts so I would have one antenna
on the top of the car and another on the trunk. To transport the antennas, I
recalled something from the contest reflector about using PVC pipe as an antenna
transport, so one evening before departing for FL, I picked up some 6" pipe and
two end pieces at Home Depot and made the perfect antenna suitcase.
My plan was to arrive at Orlando on Thursday afternoon and spend Thursday and
Friday nights at my sister's place in Ft. Lauderdale. This would leave the
whole of Friday to set up the station, lay out a route, and study the manual of
the IC-706 that I had bought a year earlier but had not had time to master (this
rig is hard to learn!). I would have Saturday morning to drive to my starting
point for the starting time at noon local. I would begin the contest somewhere
in the south, work my way up through the center of the state and finish the
contest a couple of hours north of Orlando. At the 6 PM Sunday contest finish,
I would drive back to the Orlando area, find a motel and get ready to fly out
Monday morning.
Fortunately, everything went according to plan. The airline did not lose either
my suitcase or my antennas, and I arrived at my sister's place just about
dinnertime on Thursday. The first thing on Friday I went to the nearby Home
Depot and purchased a piece of plywood for the operating table. I brought the
wooden legs for the table with me in my suitcase but the tabletop itself was
just too big to bring. After setting everything up and making sure it worked, I
was able to devote several hours to my route plan and to learning how to use my
rig. I also prepared drinking water and food so I wouldn't have to waste time
shopping for food. I was planning to spend the entire time in the car, only
stopping for things that you just can't do in the car.
Saturday morning I was on the road before 8 AM and made it to my starting point
just to the west of Lake Okeechobee nearly 1.5 hours before the contest start.
This allowed time to eat a little, double check the antennas, check out the
bands, and relax a little. It was very hot under the blazing FL sun and I had
to try to find a location where the sun would not shine directly on the rig.
These little mobile rigs get extremely hot when operated continuously and
letting them sit in the hot sun would not be good.
My route was designed to reach the maximum number of counties with as little
driving as possible. I chose a starting point close to the intersection of
three counties so that I would have almost no driving to do for the first three
or four counties, and I tried to lay out the most efficient route for the
remainder of the trip. I generally stuck to the back roads, which I had
expected to have little traffic, just once hopping on the Interstate to cover
some ground quickly. My routine was to find a place to park right after
entering a county and work down the pileup. Once the bedlam subsided, I would
proceed slowly to the next county, working stations while driving when possible
and just driving when there was traffic or navigating to do. Visitors to FL
find the Interstates extremely crowded and the driving difficult, but the
backcountry roads I chose were nearly deserted and were perfect for my
purposes.
I had come for the pileups and I was not disappointed! I was using paper
logsheets that I had designed to hold 30 contacts per page. It usually took
about 8 minutes to fill up the first page (a rate of 225 per hour) and another
10-12 minutes to get to the end of the second page. Since I was also sending by
hand, I was a very busy guy for the first 25-30 minutes in a county. Often
there were so many stations calling that all you could hear was one solid mush
of signals. Fortunately, enough ops were skillful enough to call low or high,
fast or slow, or tail end, so that a call would usually pop out of the pile.
W9RE, K7QQ, N2NC, K8MR and W3DYA seemed to get through the pile easiest, the
first four because of their QRQ and the last because he always seemed to call
low.
I was of two minds whether to do CW only or mixed mode. One the one hand, most
of the FL mobiles stick to code and many counties are pretty rare on phone, so I
thought it might be fun to pass out a lot of counties on phone. This would also
allow me to spend more time in each county and do less driving. On the other
hand, it is just so much easier to stay parked on one CW frequency and a lot
less strain on the voice. In my first county, after working 57 stations on CW
in the first 21 minutes (a rate of 163), I switched to phone to see what would
happen. I was only able to work 44 stations in 34 minutes for a rate of 77/hr.
At that point I had to ask myself whether I wanted to wear out my voice working
stations at 80 per, or to operate CW at double that rate. I tried phone one
more time in my third county but could only work seven station in 9 minutes, so
abandoning phone was an easy decision. In my 60 phone contacts, I worked enough
multipliers to allow me to submit a mixed mode score, but the rest of contest
was spent on code except for a handful of requests for QSYs to phone.
The remainder of day one is just one big blur. I was so utterly involved in the
contest I did not have time to eat a thing and I only left my car seat to visit
the bushes a couple of times. I had no idea how I was doing until I got to my
motel room and found out that I had nearly 1,100 contacts for the first day. I
was elated. My goal was to break 2,000 contacts during the contest but I really
didn't know if this was feasible. With those 1,100 contacts the first day
(1,066 after dupes), I though I had a good chance to achieve this target.
Day two started off rather slow. I alternated between 40 and 20 but my first
two counties saw rates of only 94 and 83. Then in my third county, I noticed
that output power had disappeared and I discovered that the top piece of my 20
meter hamstick had disappeared, probably knocked off by a low tree. I had to
stop and fashion a new piece, costing me about 20 minutes. At the end of the
first 2:45, my average rate was down to 73/hour and I began to worry whether I
would be able to make the 900 contacts I needed that day.
Fortunately things began to pick up after those first three hours and I was able
to keep the rate above the 100 level for the remainder of the day. For my last
four counties, the rate soared to just under 150, even though I managed to get
lost and had to spend time studying the map to get back on course. Later when I
counted up my contacts, the total for day two was 1,007 contacts (after a few
dupes), enough to put the overall Q total at 2,073. The 2,000 level may not
survive K1TO's severe log checking, but I was satisfied with the weekend.
Things had gone exceptionally well. The biggest problem I had was some pretty
bad static on Sunday afternoon in Levy, Gilchrist, Dixie and Lafayette counties.
At the side of every road I drove there were huge steel power poles about 150
feet tall that were emitting some horrible S7 noise, and I just couldn't find
any way to escape this noise. Fortunately, band conditions were pretty good and
most of the calling stations were above the noise level. I hope I didn't miss
too many weak stations due to this noise.
I have to comment on the great participation from Canada, especially Ontario. I
counted at least 19 VE/A3 calls, with some of these calls appearing in nearly
every county. From the US, 8-area calls were in the lead with approximately 50
unique calls, followed by about 35 3-area calls. 9-area and 2-area calls were
just behind. Despite their significant handicap, DX calls accounted for 8.5% of
my total QSOs, with 21 different countries making it into the log. The FQP is
already very much an international DX contest.
It appears that the bar in this event has already been raised higher. The
N4TO/M team of K1TO and N4TO reported a QSO total of over 3,000 this year, an
amazing average of 150 contacts/hour. Had this been a 48 hour contest, this QSO
rate would yield 7,200 contacts! Will the mobile division in the FQP become the
contest with the highest rates in the world? Maybe it already has.
Overall the FQP was one of most exciting and enjoyable contesting experiences of
my ham career and I'm glad I took the time to do it. While this is not likely
to become an annual event for me due to the time and expense required to travel
from nearly a thousand miles away, I do hope to be able to do it again before
too many years pass.
Thanks to all the other participants who made this such a fun event and to the
Florida Contest Group for organizing and operating what appears to have become
the country's most well-attended QSO party (at least in terms of the number of
logs submitted). It is an amazing accomplishment that this young FQP has come
so far in such a short time and it shows what can be done with organization and
determination. K4OJ, the voice of the FQP for the first few years and one of
the most avid FQP mobile operators, would no doubt be very proud.
73,
Hal W1NN
County Data:
County QSOs Rate
First Day
GLA 86 132
HEN 64 107
LEE 101 92
CHA 50 158
SAR 60 138
DES 134 104
HAR 136 130
MTE 111 115
POL 141 96
HIL 130 111
PAS 53 106
Second Day
LAK 55 94
SUM 73 83
HER 74 64*
CIT 105 100
MAO 79 128
LEV 104 101
GIL 49 118
DIX 68 128
LAF 95 112
SUW 66 158
CLM 90 146
ALC 85 146
UNI 64 148
* 20 minutes lost to antenna repair.
Note: These figures do not include some driving time in between counties.
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.hornucopia.com/3830score/
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