[ILQSO] K9JS/m Score & Thoughts (sort of long and rambling)

[Schulz Jonathan]

Hi all,

This was my second attempt at this while mobile, - (last year was a total
bust but I did learn a lot of what NOT to do, like don't set up the station
at the first County after arriving 20 minutes after the start of the
contest) 

This year set up the radio, antennas and computer on Saturday afternoon,
everything looked ok until I plugged in the DC power cord for the Laptop,
uh-oh no charging the batteries, I swear it worked from my Apartment earlier
in the week, no problem I'll use the DC/AC Inverter to power the AC/DC
Adapter to power and charge the Laptop - just a bit convoluted I think.... 

Problem is the DC/AC Inverter creates S9 hash on 20M rendering the band
pretty useless while it is running (Any thoughts on how to suppress this
noise?) so I charge the batteries while I am driving/working 40M and turn
off the Inverter while working 20M - works pretty well until I get to the
4th county and the laptop batteries crap out, (old laptop with old batteries
+ hot day = Not very long Battery Life) quickly start hand logging, (serious
PITA) finished a small run on 20M power up the inverter enter the contacts
and switch to 40m where I can run the inverter and while operating still. 

By this time I am an hour behind schedule and it's not looking promising to
finish the route, start driving and operating Livingston (this is a large
County to get through), do ok with this - except I know I sounded like an
idiot sometimes when I had to transmit/log/shift/turn a corner - I think I
never let any bad words come out however

Coolest Sight: Driving North on Rt 49 in Iroquois County I see incredible
towers and Beams and wonder who the heck lives there and I hope he isn't
transmitting somewhere while I am driving past his place (It is WB9Z's QTH),
Work Jerry later on and confirm it is his place, no wonder he does well in
contests from the Black Hole!

Worst Sight: Swarm of those Lady Bugs invades my car in Vermillion County,
still killing them today...

Didn't hear too many other (in state) mobiles, (did work about 10 out of
state mobiles) got called by KJ9C once (I think)  but couldn't complete the
contact, heard N9JF work N9AVY but he QSY'd before I could even try to make
contact

Was very cool of K0JPL (2x) and N4PN to volunteer to give me their
frequencies after I called them so I could try and run a little, Big Thank
You to you Guys!

Was fun to generate little pileups when I was in a new county (probably due
to packet??) 

Was a kick to have my Dad (AI9U) call me from the Family Cabin in Northern
Wisconsin a couple times on 40M - doubt he worked anyone else - hope it
doesn't get booted as Unique

Got very nice signal/can't believe you are a mobile comments a couple of
times - so yes I think it is worth it for mobiles to work SSB.

Things I would like to see:

Earlier Start and End Time - maybe 1600z-2400z? once it is full darkness it
is next to impossible to work SSB/Drive/Log

Some sort of Bonus Structure for Mobiles that Operate SSB - I realize the 2
pt CW / 1 pt SSB is in place to encourage more CW but since it is harder to
work SSB (signal wise) from the mobile maybe a little something could be
thrown our way...

Bonus/New Class for SOND (Single Op No Driver) :-)


So here is my claimed score

288 Q's * 230 Mults   =    66240 points

I think this is correct:, if anything I might have missed a mult for
8Q's/County 

Will upload to LOTW soon as K9JS/m if anyone needs/wants credit for their
QSO, if you want a card just send me one and I'll be glad to reciprocate

Thanks for the Q's, thanks to the sponsors, suppose I'll be back again next
year, (3rd times the Charm?)

73
Jon
K9JS



Note to N9JF - can you/will you accept an .xls spreadsheet for submission?
Couldn't get TR-log to give me the proper QSO credit as a cabrillo file so
just merged all the .dat files into Excell and went from there...