[ILQSO] AF5CC-Out of state perspective

[John Geiger]

It was an interesting couple of days leading up to the ILQP.  We started
getting our kitchen remodeled on Wednesday, and the work on Thursday put a
nice layer of dust over the center of the house, including the shack.  So,
I had to completely dissemble the shack, clean off the rigs and
accessories, and store everything in the bedroom.  I was hoping they would
finish the dust causing part of the construction by Friday, but they
didn't.  Friday also brought in a new (for me) rig, a Kenwood TS950SD.
Since the 950 has an internal PS and an internal tuner that loads up about
anything, it was the logical choice to temporarily hook up over the weekend
since it would need the minimum amount of connections and accessories.  It
is a BIG radio, though.  Spent part of Saturday afternoon constructing a
special shelf for it to sit on in the computer desk I use for the shack so
it would be in front of me at eye level.

On Sunday the sermon at Church ran long (but was good) so my start to the
ILQP was delayed 15 minutes or so.  I first went to 20 meters and heard no
ILQP activity, so figured we didn't have propagation and went to 40 meters,
where I was able to hear some of the loud IL stations.  Things didn't look
too good at the start.  After working what stations I could on 40, did
check 20 again and found a few stations there, so spent the first few hours
bouncing between the 2 bands, but 40 definitely seemed the place to be.
Luckily 40m was fairly long as there were stations to work most of the time
on that band.

I have an intermittent noise from time to time that sounds like a loud,
raspy hash type sound, and it decided to show up all day on Sunday.  It
will be on for 2-3 seconds, go away, and come back 20 seconds or so later.
It was hitting S8 at times on 40 meters. I am pretty sure it isn't in my
house, and am still trying to find out where it is coming from.  The noise
blanker on the TS950 pretty much took it out, but also hurt receiver
performance.  So, for most of the contest it was switching the NB off and
on, finding out what lead to best copy, and occasionally switching on the
10DB attenuator as that reduced some of the IMD products generated by the
NB.  I am sorry for some of the repeats I needed from Illinois stations,
there were times when the noise clobbered the exchanged.

I used the W6RK and DX summit clusters more than I probably have in the
past ILQPs and it really paid off.  Thanks to all of the mobiles out there
as well, and they kept it interesting by changing counties often.  I didn't
realize K9CQ was mobile until a few hours into the contest, I probably
missed a few counties he or she visited.  There seemed to be more
county-line portable stations on as well, which was greatly appreciated.  I
worked quite a few new counties that was.

Was anyone on from the WBGO/BOON/OGLE/DEKA intersection?  If they were, I
never heard them.  I didn't get Boone or Ogle Counties at all.  I saw a
mobile spotted for Ogle but missed them.

I probably made more QSOs on 40 meter SSB than usual thanks to the good
receiver on the TS950.  I can say that I can definitely see the difference
between a contest quality radio and a non-contest quality radio, and some
of the receive tools on the 950 definitely enabled me to make some QSOs I
wouldn't have with a different radio.  The 150 watts out was nice also,
especially on SSB.

I don't think I made more than a couple of QSOs on 20m after 4pm, as
everyone seemed to be on 40 by that time.  The last hour of the contest I
went to get on 80 meters, and even though my dipole isn't too good on 80, I
heard nothing!  I then remembered that the internal tuner on the TS950 only
functions on transmit and the dipole I use for the low bands isn't close to
resonance on 80.  I had meant to redo it in the past week, but that didnt
happen.  It looked like 80 might be a bust but then a flash of insight told
me to get the MFJ manual tuner and hook it up.  I did that, bypassed the
internal tuner, and made a few QSOs at the end on 80m CW.  I didn't try 80
SSB at all.

All in all it was a great contest, lots of activity, interesting
propagation and I made by goal of 75 counties and a food prize!  I worked
77 counties in total.

Some counties I usually work that I missed this year:  Greene, Jo Daviess,
Carroll, Ogle, Boone, Menard, McClean (where was K9ZO?).  Was there much
activity from those counties?  It was nice to see Dave NN1N come back to
Illinois to operate.

It was a great time and I am looking forward to ILQP 18!!  It will be
interesting to see what other out of state stations have to say about
propagation and activity.

73 John AF5CC