[ILQSO] RE: K9NT/N9PCS portable operation]

[Hank Greeb]

Hi, Paul:

Great input!   You ask "why more people who just want to have fun and 
don't really care about a big score (I can't be the only one like that) 
don't do this."  Your comment is very valid.  There are many ways of 
operating as a single county - renting a space in a cabin in a state 
park being one of my favorites.  But, I doubt I'd have driven 300 miles 
or so just to operate from a single county.....

I ask ""why more people don't seek permission of landowners and operate 
from 3 and 4 county intersections?"  According to Bruce, K9LOF, folks in 
rural areas, where most of the 3 and 4 county intersections exist, one 
should find one or more of the landowners agreeable with such a setup.  
He lives about 1¼ miles from the intersection of Champaign, Douglas, 
Edgar, and Vermilion counties, where N9FN operated the past two years, 
and where I operated this year.  When N9FN first came over from 
Indianapolis he didn't know about Bruce, but found that the folks on the 
corner were very agreeable.  Since this was my firs ILQP, and I probably 
wouldn't have driven 300 miles to set up a portable station in a single 
county. Being able to get 1000 Q's in the log book with the skills of an 
olde codger like me was the "pull" that brought me to Illinois.  250 Q's 
in 8 hours was about my typical speed, though in actuality I probably 
managed 40 Q's per actual operating hour, since considerable time was 
spend warming my cold body inside my vehicle.  Next year I'm bringing a 
tent and a catalytic gasoline powered tent warmer!  But, with any luck, 
the weather will be more typical high 50's to low 70's, and we might 
even be able to operate without a shelter.  (Weather.com says that the 
average high temperature for where I was on October 22 is high of 64 and 
low of 41, which would have been a delight compared to the freezer 
weather which prevailed on the 22nd! :)

Anyway, I'd like to thank the organizers of ILQP and all the 
participants for a great event!  If the Good Lord is willing, and the 
creek don't rise, I'll be somewhere in Illinois on October 21, 2007!  
Look for N9Q again next year!

73 de n8xx Hg

-------- Original Message --------
Subject:     [ILQSO] K9NT/N9PCS portable operation
Date:     Thu, 26 Oct 2006 11:52:24 -0500
From:     Paul Zerkel <pzerkel at sprelec.com>
Reply-To:     Illinois QSO Party <ilqso at mailman.qth.net>
To:     <ilqso at mailman.qth.net>



As last year we once again operated from the Painter Pond picnic area 
inside Jim Edgar Panther Creek State Fish & Wildlife Area. This site is 
located entirely inside Cass county. So we were "single-county" portable.

I know the rules do not favor this kind of a "single-county portable" 
station. But I wonder why more people who just want to have fun and 
don't really care about a big score (I can't be the only one like that) 
don't do this. Especially from one of the "rarer" counties. I see a lot 
of the counties south of I-72 were covered only by mobiles. I know all 
of those counties have at least one public park in them. Those parks 
generally have at least one shelter, some kind of bathrooms, often a 
place to build a fire. All of those things make it much easier for the 
XYL to consider coming out and maybe even cooking for the operators! 
Plus these sites usually have enough trees to hang some kind of antenna, 
and they do not require permission from land-owners to use!

Our site did not have electricity, but that made the noise floor 
relatively low and a deep cycle battery provided plenty of power for our 
radio and computer.

We had a 40m and 20m antenna. We had planned on bringing an 80m antenna 
but after seeing the forecast, we decided that we did not want to stay 
out in the cold long enough for 80 to come alive. We also discovered a 
problem with our 20m antenna, so did not get on 20 either. Obviously in 
this contest if you are only going to have one band, 40m is the one to
have.

The station was a Kenwood TS-B2000, and a Dell laptop running Kenwood's 
ARCP-2000 rig control software, MixW (for help decoding CW), and logging 
with a home-grown Access database. The laptop was powered from a 12v car 
adapter. CW was sent using K9NT's memory keyer. I considered using MixW 
to send CW, but Bob K9NT was the much more experienced CW op and he was
more familiar with his equipment than my MixW program. CW was mostly 
decoded by K9NT's brain. I was trying to use my brain, but ended up 
using the MixW crutch most of the time.

OK It was COLD! We had built a small fire in the grill, and had a small 
propane heater going, and had put up a tarp across a couple of shelter 
supports to try to get a windbreak. It helped but was not enough, by 
3:00 my fingers could hardly type to log and K9NT could hardly run the 
paddle, so we started packing up.

Thanks to more of this year's QSO's being CW, we managed to beat our 
2005 score, despite fewer multipliers. We were pleased with that.

This is one of the few contests that I truly enjoy. I don't know if we 
will do the same thing next year. But I am sure I will participate in 
some manner. I am trying to convince the contest sponsors to allow 
wet-borders. If that were to happen, I believe a maritime-mobile op from 
the Illinois River could be great fun. We'll see.

Here are the rather meager results from our 2006 IQP operation.

CW QSOs: 23
PH QSOs: 17
IL counties: 27
States: 7
DX: 1

Congratulations to WIARC for succesfully running their first IQP!

73,
Paul, N9PCS







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