The Minnesota QSO Party will be on the air the first Saturday, the 5th
of February starting at 14:00 UTC.
The Minnesota Wireless Association members have been busy lining up
mobile and rover stations, and pursuing fixed stations to operate again
this year. We want to make 2011 another record year of participation.
There are 14 mobile / rover stations and dozens of fixed stations signed
up to make QSOs with you. We look forward to putting your call sign into
our logs!
Attention potential MnQP "Sweepers"... The MWA has developed some new
tools to make our QSO Party more fun. Here's a quick overview...
I can already tell you the Achilles heal of a MnQP 87-county sweep this
year will be *Norman* county, a few wavelengths north of Fargo/Moorehead
on the North Dakota / Minnesota border. That county will be visited by
the *NØIJ/m* team at their traditional lightning speed! You definitely
don't want to blink or you might miss the 19 minute "window of
opportunity" to put "*NOR*" into your log!
"So... what time will the NØIJ/m team be there", you ask?
I'm really glad you asked that question! It would be easy for me to tell
you in this message, but the MWA really wants you to check out the great
tool that Pat KØPC has created on the website.
Follow this link:
http://www.w0aa.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=33&Itemid=31
Then left click that red, northwestern county that shows the town of Ada
near its center. Voila! A helper window will pop up and give you all the
details!
Next, look over to the menu of callsigns on the right side and click the
NØIJ/m check box. The NØIJ/m route will paint onto the map. You can even
determine which direction they're traveling by clicking one of the next
counties on their route. Comparing its start time to the Norman county
start time will answer that question! When you double left click onto
the map it will zoom you in for a closer look of the route... right down
to the specific highways that will be used.
So... how did I know Norman county will be a critical QSO for the MnQP
sweep?
The answer comes from another tool developed during the previous years.
This is the Excel workbook I use to collect mobile routes and times,
then generate different views of the information. The 2011 MnQP workbook
has been redesigned to be more user friendly and is available for
download from my web site, here:
*http://tinyurl.com/4gblrgh*
Select the 2011 folder and you will find an XLS file. It's the actual
Excel workbook I use. You can also download the PDF file which is a
4-page table that you can print. The table lists the planned activity in
chronological order and provides columns to "check off" the counties for
CW or Phone QSOs.
You might not be going for an 87-county sweep, but you might be
interested in filling in some missing counties for your County Hunter
quest. The workbook will provide the call signs, times, and durations of
all the mobile and rover stations, as well as the call signs of MN fixed
stations who will be active.
The new workbook design includes "Sort" buttons that allow you to change
to different views of the schedules. Use them to change from an
alphabetic list of counties to a numeric list of stations that will
visit counties. (This is where you will find Norman county will be
visited for 19 minutes by NØIJ/m.)
NOTE: The sorting routines rely on macro coding so it is a requisite
that VBA be enabled. The standard Microsoft installation has this
advanced feature disabled to thwart malicious code from being executed
by a hacker.
Turning the VBA feature "on" is buried within the TOOLS > OPTIONS >
SECURITY > MACRO SECURITY > SECURITY LEVEL path. You will want to change
this setting to "Medium" and "OK" your way back to the program.
If you have any questions or problems, send me an email. Your comments
and ideas are also welcomed!
A couple final thoughts... please be aware these are estimated times at
best. Any number of factors can influence the planned schedule of any
station. You should also know the new MWA website will be tracking those
stations who have APRS capability in their vehicles.
73 de Bob - KØRC in MN (CHS)
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