[ILQSO] Wayne County portable

[Jim Funk]

Having researched many 3-county corner locations (and driven to several of them) I'd suggest:  

1) Safety: if you can't park without worrying constantly about passing traffic, it's not worth the risk.  Some corners are bordered by major highways and you simply cannot put a wire antenna across the road without endangering someone or arousing the ire of local law enforcement.  If this happens, the ILQP committee will disavow all knowledge of your actions.
2)  Integrity: we are pushing the envelope by allowing county corner operation.  Ensure that part of your station (i.e. antennas) is actually in all 3 counties, as much as is possible. This means carefully researching the location with the aid of accurate maps and using wire antennas to spread out your operating position.  This is not a bad thing anyhow, especially if you are going to share the location with a second station.  "Wet lines" are not generally allowed by county hunting rules, though there are exceptions if you can demonstrate that portions of the antennas were truly in each of the three counties.  If you can toss a wire across a small stream, go for it.  I wouldn't recommend anchoring in the middle of the Illinois River, however, to activate Pike/Calhoun/Greene.
3)  Accessibility: If you can't get there without a bulldozer, it's probably not practical.  There are a couple of corners in my area that you literally cannot get to by reasonable means.  One of the "good ones" requires driving a quarter of a mile across a field, which means you may or may not have access to it, depending upon the state of the corn harvest and permission from the land owner.
4)  Power: in many cases, you will need a generator.  I very nearly got stranded once relying on my car battery for the entire 8 hours.  Fortunately, I realized my CW signal was starting to chirp, and I started the car while I still had a little battery left!
5)  Antenna supports:  If you can find convenient trees and can string wire antennas in them, you're golden. Otherwise, you may have to rely upon verticals or take along some mast materials.  There are fewer fence posts out there every year.
6)  Noise:  nearby traffic or power lines can be a killer (literally, but I'm talking about finding out you have S9 line noise on every band at 1750Z....).

Most of these assessments require actually going to the site with a radio and power source.

I would love to see a portable operation at every accessible 3-corner county of the state.  If that ever happened, I would be on one of the corners myself and wouldn't have to drive 400 miles during the event to try to activate a bunch of counties as a mobile...

73, Jim N9JF



-----Original Message-----
From: ILQSO [mailto:ilqso-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of Robert Dailey NV9S
Sent: Saturday, September 06, 2014 5:19 PM
To: Millerd18; Illinois QSO Party
Subject: Re: [ILQSO] Wayne County portable

Thanks.  I've used a county map along with Google maps, following the roads and rivers to come up with what I believe to be the coordinates of the proper location. I've shared this with my co-operator and we're going to take a drive out there to survey the area to see where we can set up.


Robert Dailey, NV9S
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