[ILQSO] KJ9C Rover

[Mel Crichton]

"Rover" is appropriate.... this QSO party was a dog. Spent three days getting everything ready and shook down. Spent a lot of money on inverters and DC adapters and a laptop that I did not use. For once I had no RFI problems in the computer or rig, but using N1MM for the first time on my Win XP laptop caused a number of problems..... never try to use a mouse while driving on downstate Illinois'  finer gravel roads. 

Apologies for disappearing in the middle of a run... sometimes I warped to the wrong VFO (N1MM), a couple times I blew a fuse - once on the laptop plug (it DOES draw more than 3 amps), once to the rig.... the battery booster overheated (odd), and I had to QRP to 70 watts for the last 7 1/2 hours.... not a lot of dB loss, but probably noticeable.... I tried to give N9UM a number of unique mults, but he never heard me. And he was LOUD. In general SSB was poor, but I did make a few 75 meter QSOs... a rarity.

Because of the strange way N1MM logs comments, I am not sure if my log shows the county that I was in correctly.... I did not catch this glitch until late in the day, so there's a chance that stations worked just as I crossed a line got the right county from me but were logged wrong by me.

Still not sure that my log has every contact in it.... about half as many as last year but it did not feel like I was running half as fast. There are no major gaps, but maybe MM did not log all the contacts it flagged as dupes. There were a couple holes in the log for fuse replacement and rest stops....  If the log checkers are handing out a lot of Not-In-Log dings to others who say they worked me, then we'll withdraw the log. On the other hand, maybe it really was a down year, but at my advanced age it felt fast.

Got to stop on three 3-county corners and one or two county lines (when  the deserving were heard in the pileup). Worked few IL mobiles, and had to go to 80 around sunset to get my first IL county.

485 CW, 42 SSB, 997 QSO points, 40 SPC, 26 counties = 65 K points....   

Next year - buy a good Win 98 laptop that will run on 11 volts and go back to TR for logging. 

Anybody want to buy a nice Compaq Armada with Win 98? Needs 16 volts to run.

Mel KJ9C