[ILQSO] Quote of the day

[MT]

I worked a guy on 40ph at 2020z who was parked in his car in the 
driveway.  He was on the ocean in WA.  3pm mobile phone q's on 40 
from Washington State was a good indicator to confirm what we already 
knew.  LONG LONG LONG

Mark





At 09:04 AM 10/22/2007, you wrote:
>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
>_______________________________________________
>ILQSO mailing list
>ILQSO at mailman.qth.net
>http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/ilqso
>ILQP webpage:
>http://www.w9awe.org/ILQP.html
>list administrator is Danny NG9R
>for list problems contact ng9r at arrl.net
>
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>ILQSO mailing list
>ILQSO at mailman.qth.net
>http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/ilqso
>ILQP webpage:
>http://www.w9awe.org/ILQP.html
>list administrator is Danny NG9R
>for list problems contact ng9r at arrl.net