[ILQSO] Re: IlQP K4BAI Non-IL HP by AD1C

[Elmer P Frohardt]

Hi, Jim,
Thanks for calling us several times last Sunday in the ILQP.    Always a
pleasure to contact you in or out of tests.   I hear you often in pileups
as I try to work the DX myself from the back seat of our Toyota Camry.

Anyhow,   you said in a recent posting to the ILQSO reflector:

****I really don't like the concept of 3- and 4-county lines.  USCA (and
MARAC) 
rules tolerate 2-county lines, and this would be much simpler from a 
record-keeping point of view.  I don't see how one can possibly say they 
are operating on a tri-county or quad-county line *exactly*.  A car
pulled 
over to the side of a road, with 1/2 the car ahead of, and 1/2 the car 
behind the "Entering Waka-waka County" sign is easy to understand and
justify.*****

---Well,  I can understand how you feel, especially in regard to MOBILE
stations doing that but there is a way to handle it correctly (in my
opinion) with a PORTABLE station.   Here's what we have been doing at the
4-corner we have used often and at several other spots over the years:  
We feel, as you do, that part of the station should be in each county so
we lay out a counterpoise or radial or whatever one wants to call it.  We
run it from the radio ground terminal out to the center of the
intersection or whatever is the exact junction point and circle it with
about a six-inch diameter ring of the end of the wire.  It is thin hookup
wire, probably #18 to 22 and then tape it down every few feet with duct
tape.   It surprised us to find that even heavy traffic does not disturb
it.  You can fix anything with duct tape, you know.  Thus, a part of the
radiating system IS in each county.  

Most county junctions have some sort of surveyor marker.  The ones around
here are about the size of a nickel and must be the head of a big spike. 
 I have a jpg file somewhere in my previous computer that shows a picture
our solution and if I can find it, I'll send it to you as an attachment. 
I will let you know in the e-mail what it is so you won't be concerned
about a virus creeping in.  Not sure if I can find it or when.   Of
course there is no way of knowing if everyone claiming 3 or 4 counties
goes to this extreme but we have to take each others' word for a lot of
other things in contests.  

I have thought of us barring 3 and 4 county operation from the IQP but
now feel that we shouldn't do so as long as there is a legal and
honorable way of multicounty operating.