New England QSO Party - 2023
Call: K2UA
Operator(s): N2MG K2UA
Station: K2UA/M
Class: M/S Mobile HP
QTH: MA NH VT
Operating Time (hrs): 20
Summary:
Band CW-Dig Qs Ph Qs
------------------------
80: 167
40: 615
20: 528
15:
10:
------------------------
Total: 1310 0 Mults = 58 Total Score = 151,960
Club:
Comments:
Rig: TS-480HX with SGC500 amplifier to a Tarheel 200A-HP antenna in a receiver
mount. Tarheel 40A-HP dedicated to 40 meters on a brush guard up front, running
barefoot at 200 W. The radio is permanently installed and the vehicle has lots
of permanent bonding. Power for the amplifier was supplied by a 200-Ah SOK LFP
battery. The radio was powered by a separate home-brew 200-Ah LFP battery.
Accessories ran from a 75-Ah LFP battery. The battery setup allows us to operate
from a fixed location (county line) without drawing any current from the
vehicle's start battery.
Counties activated: 23 (13 in Vermont, 6 in New Hampshire, and 4 in Mass).
1210 miles of driving, including 600 miles in New England and a little more than
600 to get there and back.
Mike, N2MG, and I started planning this contest in spring 2022 and we've been
looking forward to it since our NEQP debut in 2021. This year's NEQP was our
third full-time QP effort together, though we have collaborated on the last two
NYQP contests as well, as separate M/S mobile operations. We were looking
forward to another long drive with obscure movie references, road sign
commentary, incredible scenery, high gasoline bills, made-up on-the-spot memes,
and vaguely inappropriate phonetics of the sort that begin to flow freely after
a certain amount of fatigue and sleep deprivation have set in. In short, there's
way more to our operation than just the operating!
Most of all we looked forward to "greeting our regular customers," and
you did not disappoint!
Route: Started at the BERMA/FRAMA line, in a deep valley. Traveled north into
Vermont, then northeast into New Hampshire, turning northwest and traveling back
into Vermont on Saturday night. Stayed in St Johnsbury, arriving around 1:15 AM
local time. Departed by 8 AM for points north and west in Vermont, then traveled
south down Rte 100 most of the day through Vermont, finishing with two more
Massachusetts counties. Left New England at 0001Z for home.
By any objective measure, 1300 QSOs looks really good for a mobile operation in
a 20-hour contest that gets 1000 logs every year. However, aside from a few good
runs, it was a struggle for us to get anything going most of the time. Other QSO
parties create a puzzling issue to overcome for the first 9-hour segment of the
contest. Like 2021, we ended day 1 with just 555 QSOs. Our rates were terrible
for long stretches, especially Sunday afternoon. We had a three-hour stretch of
28-24-30 QSOs, for example, and only four clock hours of the entire contest at
or above 100 QSOs, peaking at 123 in the 21Z hour on Sunday. That is to say, not
close to what this setup usually produces. Still--keeping things in
perspective-- we had a great time. We were able to be out on the road operating
the radio in ideal weather and with amazing scenery.
Highlights: Every QSO with our regular chasers, especially OM2VL, K0SM (20+ Qs),
and KE2AMI. KE2AMI (Mrs K0SM), who has been licensed just a few months, made her
first-ever CW QSO with us on Saturday evening and then worked us 11 more times
throughout the course of the event! A big thrill for this OT. OM2VL (30+ QSOs)
was as reliable as ever. I began to get nervous if we went 20 minutes in a new
county or a new band without working him. He and DL3DXX were strong and easy to
work on all the bands--stronger than a lot of stateside and VE stations.
Other chasers who called in ten times or more included K1GU, WN4AFP, N8II,
K4BAI, AA5JF, DL3DXX, K1RO, K3MM, K4QS, K5KPE, K9CW, KO1H, N2CU, N2JJ, N4OX,
N6AR, N8UM, NE8P, NS2N, WA6KHK, WB2FUE, WB2WPM, and WN1GIV. One of the greatest
feelings in mobile QSO party operating is the thrill you get when all the
regulars call in--it's really hard to describe how cool that is!
The scenery was another great highlight. It is a very fine spring this year in
New England! The station was reliable too, which you can't take for granted. We
broke the PowerPole connector off the cable that powers all the accessory
electronics as we were loading Mike's stuff into the vehicle, but that was a
quick fix--that's why we carry spares.
Lowlights: Read K5ZD's comments on conditions. He uses the word
"terrible" three times, which is simply not enough. The thing that
hurt us the most was a complete lack of short skip, which aside from making it
hard to work people, made frequency selection and management difficult. We could
often only tell that we were too close to someone else by hearing their callers
in the passband. Hard to say how many times we chose poorly, but it was a
lot--we had to move around a lot more than usual to try to find a quiet, clear
spot. Apologies to all who are used to finding us on the same frequency on each
band with every QSY.
Noise was also a challenge. Hearing well is difficult when you're on the road. I
know people were frustrated trying to work us; I apologize. We were frustrated
too. Thank you for sticking with us! The station works well, and the vehicle
itself is quiet, but during our trips through towns of any size and even rural
areas along power lines, we had some hideous noise. With more normal conditions,
people are louder on average, so we have fewer issues hearing people.
We had a weird issue in Northern Vermont on Saturday night on 80 meters. Every
time Mike would transmit, the hands-free function in the car would want to dial
a phone call. This got old in about 30 seconds. This is a problem I solved a few
years ago by disconnecting the rear defroster in the Pilot--all it takes is
about 35 W to trigger it when the defroster is connected. We were running 500 W.
The only thing I had changed was to plug in the dual-band 144/440 FM radio for
the trip to Mike's house. It uses a PowerPole cable that goes directly to the
vehicle battery, but it doesn't have a choke in line. Once I disconnected the
power cable to that radio, the problem was solved.
On balance, it was a great event and we enjoyed it a lot. It's one of my
favorite radio weekends of the year. Thanks to K1KI and anyone else who has a
hand in making NEQP a great event! Looking forward to being back next year.
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.3830scores.com/
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