[ILQSO] Quote of the day

[Bill Morrison]

Hey Jim, Thanks for use of the tuner, it worked fine on 20 and 40 but I 
couldn't get that antenna to load up on 80, still managed to work a few on 
80 late in the contest.  You'r sure right about 40! The band was very long 
and I couln't hear ANY Illinois stations with the exception of W9OAB!

Your guys with the mobile and portable ops were at least able to enjoy the 
nice day, I was stuck in my basement shack! Oh well!

73's from N9UPG

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "James Funk" <jfunk at fossnorthamerica.com>
To: "Illinois QSO Party" <ilqso at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Monday, October 22, 2007 8:49A
Subject: [ILQSO] Quote of the day


Until somebody comes up with a better one.....

K9IUA:  "At least it was a beautiful day to be out in the country."

I knew 40 meters was in trouble when at the beginning I couldn't HEAR
any IL stations from our west-central location (BROW).  This wasn't a
big surprise; I run counties on 40 meter CW most days and lately have
often found it impossible to work stations closer than 350 to 400 miles
during much of the day.  When I worked my fourth Delaware and hadn't
heard Indiana, Wisconsin, Missouri or Iowa (which I NEVER heard), I
thought "hmmmm"....

It's always a little difficult to get off to a fast start in this
contest when I'm mobile.  Ninety percent of the time, I send while
driving (right-handed), and during the contest I switched to lefty as
Melba drove so I could send with one hand and log with the other (yes, I
can write left-handed, but I have to think about it, and I was already
overloaded mentally).  Add the decisions about band-changes and whether
to CQ or search and pounce for awhile, and doing a QSO party is pretty
much NOTHING like just running counties for the County Hunters.

In BROW, after eighteen minutes and only twelve contacts, I muttered,
"Golly, I hate to do this" and went to 40 SSB.  Again, not one IL
station heard!  "Where the heck is N9UM?  K9ZO?  KI9A? NG9R? (only miles
away)" I could hear out of state stations working IL but could not hear
the IL stations AT ALL.  I called K8MR (blasting away) who kindly
offered his frequency.  Several minutes of CQing netting a whopping ONE
contact, so....back to CW.  That was the LAST SSB QSO garnered by CQing.

I didn't feel very loud on CW, either, though I had some nice runs from
time to time (probably when I was spotted, though I haven't looked at
the spot logs on W6RK yet).  I would occasionally tune across 40 and
find a nice pileup calling someone in-state that I couldn't hear well
enough to work (or at all).  I would like very much for one of you
out-of-staters who worked a lot of mobiles to give some assessment of
who was loud and who wasn't.  I felt like I must have been about the
strength of mouse milk.  When I began to hear a few IL fixed or portable
stations, I tried calling, but it wasn't until MNRD (the FIFTH COUNTY)
that I finally got the attention of an IL station that wasn't basically
in my back yard.  The first IL mobile I worked was W9MSE in DEWT when I
was in SANG (my SEVENTH county). On the other hand, WA9AQN seemed to
hear me every time I called him!  Despite all the calling in pileups (a
LOT) and constant CQing otherwise, I worked a whopping SEVEN different
IL stations until I went to 80 meters at 2150Z.

The out-of-staters, however, really kept things hopping.  I think AB7RW
was waiting every time I went to 20 CW.  DL3GA, OM3DX, LY2ZZ, KL7D, and
CU2JT spiced up the pileups a bit.  There have been several years when
even as a portable I couldn't work five DXCC countries.  On 40, there
were a lot who really seemed to be roaming the band and pouncing on
mobiles.  Though I hate to pick out one, it can't be avoided: K5UV
worked me in EVERY SINGLE COUNTY I RAN. Incredible.  I wonder if he was
as fortunate with the other mobiles?

The most maddening feature of pretty much the entire trip was the LINE
NOISE.  It was just terrible on most of the roads we drove. I know there
were stations out there calling me that thought, "What an idiot!  Get a
receiver!"  When the line noise is S9 or higher and you don't have time
to pull off onto a line-less side road, I don't know what to try.
Comments from other mobiles??

The equipment worked just fine otherwise.  I used the mini-Tarheel on 40
and the Hustlers on 80 and 20.  I know they are not the greatest
antennas in the world, but sometimes you have to go with what you have.
Getting home from a 4200-mile business trip at 9 pm on Saturday and
having to speak twice on Sunday morning didn't allow time for any
preparation beyond putting a set of headphones in the car and grabbing a
pad of paper for logging and a lap-board for the log and paddles.  Yes,
I logged on paper; it's not my "recommendation", but it was the best
alternative under the circumstances.  Next year I hope to go back to
some computer-based logging, but I wasn't in the mood to deal with
inverter and computer noise along with all of the other complexities.
I'm sure it was obvious that I was sending by hand.  Bumpy roads make
perfect CW impossible....

Okay, I just checked the spots log.....

Stations spotting IL stations: K4UB, K8QWY, WA8LKD, KS5A, VA3NN, N5UZW,
K2DRH, K0RCJ, WQ7A, DL6KVA

IL stations spotted:  NN9K/M, K9OT, N9JF/M, N9CDX/P, KN9T/P, "N2JB",
N9BIL, AJ9C, WI9X, WB9Z, W9IL, N9FN, K9WA, W9GKA, W9ZJX, W9FY, K9CT,
N9UM, W9TY, N1KW/9, KI9A

That was the first hour.  If you want to see how many times you were
spotted, and by whom, go to http://ch.w6rk.com/, type you call into the
"mobile call" window, select "50" in the "show spots" box and click
"search". Pretty cool....

At about 2040Z, 40 meters just "went away" for about 15 minutes.  I
could still hear stations but pretty much nobody called. I still
couldn't get the attention of the few IL stations I could hear well
enough to identify.  I tried 80 and didn't find a soul.  It was about
this time that we were panicking, thinking we couldn't possible make it
to our last county (MNRO) by 0200Z.  Melba did a masterful job of
driving the entire route (at legal speeds) without getting lost and with
minimal prompting and basically no meaningful conversation from her
spouse for eight hours (and only one opportunity to get out of the car).
I didn't get out from 1700Z until we stopped to eat and get gas at 0220Z
in MNRO.  I'm probably getting to old for that.  PLEASE don't suggest
lengthening the contest. (Okay, you can suggest it, but not this
week....)

We skipped CHRS, knowing the SVRC group was on the SANG/CHRS line (at
least, hoping they were...I never heard them) in order to get to MNRO,
which we did, at 0029Z.  A lonely gravel road and a nice little flurry
on 80 and 40 at the end....and silence.  Whew.

It looks like a "bottom line" of about 500 CW contacts and 13 (yes,
13....) SSB.  Five DXCC, 34 states/provinces (only one province), and
somewhere around 40 counties (I logged on paper, remember...this is
going to take awhile) for around 80,000 points.  As I mentioned earlier,
I was a bit bummed about the score until I started reading other
comments.  Maybe it wasn't so bad after all....

Once again, a tremendous THANK YOU to the mobiles and portables in
particular, and especially to those who made the effort to come to the
party from out-of-state.  I hope you all got home in one piece!

Keep the logs coming to n9jf at arrl.net.  Summary sheets are not
"required" for electronic entries, but they are recommended.  If we know
how you figured your score, we can more easily avoid making mistakes in
our processing by comparing our calculation to yours.  Yes, we will make
some mistakes, but we'd like to minimize them!!

I've received a pile of e-mails with logs already.  The vast majority
are from stations I didn't work, and a lot of them are from stations who
have not sent in electronic logs before, so the next month should be
interesting.....

73, Jim N9JF
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