Wisconsin QSO Party
Call: AE0EE/M
Operator(s): AE0EE K0BBC
Station: W0ZF/M
Class: M/M Mobile LP
QTH: WI
Operating Time (hrs): 6
Summary:
Band CW-Dig Qs Ph Qs
------------------------
160:
80: 90 8
40: 146 0
20: 51 0
15:
10:
6:
2: 2
UHF:
------------------------
Total: 287 10 Mults = 52 Total Score = 35,316.0
Club: Minnesota Wireless Assn
Comments:
100 W, screwdriver antenna on the back of W0ZF's F-150 pickup.
Counties: PIE (18), PEP (17), BUF (7), TRE (17), JAC (14), EAU part 1 (2), CLA
(35), WOO (18), MAR (27), TAY (41), CHI (47), EAU part 2 (54).
This QSO party was an adventure in spontaneity. We didn't make the decision to
go until Sunday morning. Dave (W0ZF) had family commitments in the afternoon,
but offered his truck to Matt (K0BBC) and me to put Wisconsin on the air. We
installed Matt's FT-991, set up the operating position in the back seat, and as
we drove toward the Wisconsin border around noon, worked on finding the
screwdriver settings for the various bands.
As we reached the border (about 7 minutes after contest start), we had rig
control working but no computer-generated CW. While usually I prefer to send
code by hand, bouncing along down the road induces too many mistakes for me, so
when mobile I strongly prefer macro CW---especially with the callsign suffixes
that change each county!
After trying different things to get the keying working, we eventually stopped
and swapped in my FT-857d which my laptop is more familiar with. An hour into
the contest we made our first contact.
Our multi-multi mobile setup is primarily an HF station in the back seat using
the screwdriver antenna. However, we monitor 146.550 FM, and will occasionally
pull over to give a call there too. The truck was pretty noisy RF-wise, and
especially on 40 m I was having trouble hearing stations through the noise. It
was a little frustrating knowing there was a pileup but being unable to pick out
any of it.
Here are a few of the highlights: we worked WP2B four times, as well as F8BBL
and IZ3NVR once each. Our most frequent states were IL, OH, TX, WI, and MN.
Rates were pretty high sometimes, especially after we moved to 80 m late in the
afternoon. We logged 4 stations in a minute several times. The best 10-minute
period had 29 contacts (174/hr) and best 60-minute period had 95 (including 1
and 2 FM contacts respectively.
One small surprise from the log was that there are only 135 unique callsigns
logged, despite nearly 300 contacts. I guess that's more data showing that
it's great to be a mobile station in a QSO party! Top chasers were K9NW(10),
W9RE (9), K9CT (8), N2CU (8), AF8A (7), NW0M (7), W9EAU (7), and top DX-chaser
was WP2B (4)
The roads were pretty good until 6:30 or 7:00 PM, when we started to have some
light snow. Despite some navigational errors which put us on the shortest path
(county roads) rather than the fastest path (larger roads), we managed to finish
up near Eau Claire and had a safe (but slow) drive back to the Twin Cities.
There were a lot of cars in the ditches as we drove by.
After a very slow ARRL DX SSB the previous weekend, it was fun to get back into
the swing of high-rate contesting with WIQP! See you next year!
~Bill
AE0EE
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