[ILQSO] ILQP 2007 from N9Q/N8XX Perspective

[John Geiger]

Hi Hank

THanks for the pictures.  As someone who used to live
in Dekalb county, with often visted relatives in oth
Ogle and WInnebago counties, I have often wondered
what it looked like at the 4 grid corner.  Now I know!

73s John AA5JG

--- Hank Greeb <n8xx at arrl.org> wrote:

> 
> First of all, a BIG thank you to N9GZ for suggesting
> I take over the 
> corner of Boone, Dekalb, Ogle & Winnebago Counties
> because he and KN9T 
> wanted a location closer to home.  It was a BLAST!
> 
> I drove from Rockford, Michigan, got to that corner
> Saturday afternoon, 
> cased the situation, picked out an operating
> location <100 feet from the 
> actual corner, literally in a corn field, and then
> went into Rockford, 
> Illinois for the evening.
> 
> Sunday morning early, I went out to the site, and
> started setting up.  
> Everything went well except for the "tennis ball
> eating tree" which I 
> had decided would be a good support for one end of
> the antenna.  I got a 
> rope over one tree - a nice 40' or so tree, and then
> tried the other 
> tree - but it ate two tennis balls in a row.  I was
> running short on 
> time, so plan B went into effect, and the one end of
> the antenna was at 
> about 10', which was as high as I could throw the
> rope over without help 
> of a slingshot.  That made the center of the antenna
> about 20' off the 
> ground - not optimum for good radiation, but I
> figured it was better 
> than a dummy load 6' under ground, so what the h....
> 
> The next thing was the generator - a brand new
> "no-name" 2 cycle 
> generator, which had a "gallop" - even with a
> constant load it would 
> occasionally slow down to about 100 volts, then the
> governor would take 
> hold and it would race to over 130 volts.  This was
> exacerbated when I 
> keyed the rig - going from less than 30 watts on
> receive to about 200 
> watts on transmit, and the galloping was more
> fierce.  I couldn't 
> operate more than about 50 watts out before the
> power shutdown on the 
> rig and/or power supply would shut off.
> 
> However, contacts were still made.  The weather was
> fine, a couple 
> neighbors came by and said hello.  It was a fairly
> quiet rural road on 
> both sides of the corner - the traffic wasn't a
> problem except for an 
> occasional farm tractor which was hauling corn from
> a field down the 
> road to a farm somewhere north of my location.
> 
> As others have said, 20 was a bust - Only 10 Q's (24
> log entries) from 3 
> DX stations, 7 USA stations.  They did give me some
> unique multipliers, 
> so 20 wasn't a complete dud! 40 was long from the
> beginning, I had 67 
> Q's (268 log entries), but very few actually inside
> Illinois.  80 was 
> the workhorse, with 126 Q's (504 log entries).  I
> managed 62 Phone 
> contacts (248 log entries), 141 CW (564 log
> entries).  Total claimed 
> score is 119,712.  Nothing to write home about, but
> it was fun anyway.
> 
> I'm sure the lackluster performance was a
> combination of a not so good 
> antenna, lower than possible output power, and
> operator incompetence, 
> but fun!
> 
> I took a few pictures of the cornfield, etc., 
> They're at 
> http://www.greeb.net/2007ilqp
> 
> I'm looking forward to 2008 IlQP, and, presuming I'm
> still pumping 
> blood, I'll be back!
> 
> 73 de n8xx Hg (operating N9Q at the corner of Boone,
> Dekalb, Ogle & 
> Winnebago Counties during 2007 ILQP)
> _______________________________________________
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> ILQP webpage:
> http://www.w9awe.org/ILQP.html
> list administrator is Danny NG9R
> for list problems contact ng9r at arrl.net
> 


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