Kansas QSO Party - 2022
Call: N0E
Operator(s): AD0DX
Station: N0E
Class: Rover LP
QTH: KS
Operating Time (hrs): 10
Summary:
Band CW Qs Ph Qs Dig Qs
----------------------------
80:
40:
20:
15:
10:
6:
----------------------------
Total: 900 10 0 Mults = 45 Total Score = 118,000
Club:
Comments:
I moved to Tucson Arizona in March 2022 and at first I was going to skip the
KSQP. But the more I thought about it the more I really wanted to
be active in the KSQP again.
I left Tucson Thursday at 6pm, slept in Las Cruces NM and then drove to Dodge
City KS on Friday. As I was approaching Kansas I was thinking... why didn't
I choose my route to start near Liberty KS? It would have saved me some driving
time.
As I left Dodge City, KS for the Clark / Commanche county line, the sky was
black at 8:15 and there was lightening in that direction. I started heading
there,
but when the rain started and I was still about 30 minutes away I decided to
just divert to Ford / Kiowa to start the contest.
It did rain a little at Ford / Kiowa but I started on 40 cw and then moved to 20
cw. I was there for about 30 minutes.
I operated as a rover this year. So I would stop at a county line and make
contacts, and then drive to my next location with the radio off. I like
operating this way, it gives me a chance to rest between pileups.
My next stop was the Pawnee / Edwards / Hodgeman 3 county line. I operated at
this location last year, but my only concern was the rain. Some of the back
roads
in rural Kansas can become very slick after a rain. So I drove to Offerle KS
and started down the dirt road to the county line. After 1/2 a mile I stopped
and got out of my truck just to look at the weather. The rain was to the east
and the wind was from the south and the road was dry so it looked safe to
proceed. This turned out to be a good decision and I didn't see any rain for
the next few hours.
I had a nice run at PAW / EDW / HOG and was there for around an hour. I worked
40 cw / 20 cw and 20 phone, but I found phone so busy it was hard to
get many qso's.
After this I drove to Rush / Ellis / Ness. I had also been to this spot last
year. I need to mention that I had bought a Microsoft Surface for the KSQP
this year. It has facial recognition and also a pin for login. It was only
about 3 weeks old and I had been using the facial recognition option to log in.
I had my headset on and opened up the Surface... and due to the headset it
didn't recognize me. I took the headset off and the Surface said I was locked
out
and wanted the pin. I had no idea what the pin was. I tried a bunch of
different guesses but nothing worked. So I was forced to log the 3 county line
by
hand. That wasn't so bad, but typing all the qso's into the log by hand when I
returned was not that enjoyable.
Next was Trego and did some 20 cw and tried 20 phone. But again around 14240 it
was so busy that I had a hard time making many contacts.
I did work VE5KS on phone and asked him to spot me and he indicated that the
spotting page wasn't really working properly at that time.
Next I had a 2 hour drive to Phillips / Rooks / Graham county line. Of course
Google maps said the fastest route was on back roads but I learned long ago
not to trust Google maps for rural driving directions. If you are thinking of
going mobile / roving / portable in rural Kansas google 'kdsot.org <county
name>
county map' to get the official Kansas DOT state county maps. These are another
good resource for getting rural road information.
This spot was quite remote with pumpjacks around and not a lot of people but I
had a good solid hour of operating there. I recorded the gps coordinates of
the corner using Google Maps before I left and this also helped me to know I was
in the correct spot.
After this I drove to Prairie Dog State park to meet RJ WY7AA / N0I. RJ and I
caught up and it was good to see him again. I slept under the stars
in the back of my Ford Ranger and it was really beautiful. You could see the
Milky Way, thousands of stars, shooting stars and satellites. It was a
really beautiful clear night.
The next morning we headed to Norton / Sheridan / Thomas. I picked the wrong
road to the corner but we got there eventually. I worked 40cw and 20cw
for 30 minutes. Then drove to Rawlins and did 20 minutes of 20cw just to put
the county on the air.
After that I said goodbye to RJ and I headed south. I decided to stop in Colby
KS and get something to eat, because I had a long day planned. I wanted
to get to Santa Rosa NM after the contest so I'd only have an 8 hour drive on
Monday.
I was going to operate from Gove but then I realized that the Gove / Logan line
was just as easy. By 11am it was around 98F so I only operated 30 minutes
because it was hot (and I operated with the engine / ac off).
Then I headed south to Scott / Finney. Looking at the map I could have made
Scott / Finney / Lane but it was 100F by this point and I just wanted to
finish up and head home. It was pretty hot operating, and at around 2:50pm
local my Microsoft Surface finally overheated and shutdown. Thankfully my log
file didn't get corrupted.
Thanks to Bob W0BH for putting on a great contest and to all the ops for all the
qso's.
73
Ron, ad0dx / N0E
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