[ILQSO] W9AWE/M musings

[Jim Funk]

This will serve as a "morning after" deposit of miscellaneous thoughts....stuff I should remember for next year but might like to forget.  Maybe it will help someone else or at least make them feel better.....  If such is not of interest to you, please hit the Delete key; it won't offend me in the least.....

At the last minute (near-enough literally), we realized that only one of the club station calls was going to be active (W9OAB) and the other (W9AWE) was going to be available.  Since both of these are 25 point stations for the IL200 award, it seemed to be a shame to not have both of them on for ILQP.  So....I asked the trustee for permission to use the call for the mobile operation instead of N9JF.  From a practical standpoint, there seemed to be no issues with doing this except for wondering if I could manage to send W9AWE a couple of thousand times in 8 hours instead of N9JF.  No, I haven't decided yet to try to send from the PC instead of manually.  Changing function keys in mid-contest a dozen times is just one more thing I don't need to remember to do.

Strategically, I made a few announcements just prior to start so people would look for W9AWE, not N9JF, and updated the Planned Operations file one more time.

Since I usually operate from the driver's seat, but not during ILQP, I changed the paddle leads to send left-handed.  It has been several years since I did this for an extended operation, but no difficulties were encountered.  For most of the contest, I sent with the left and typed with the right. If responses weren't immediate, that was the reason.  

I set up N1MM for logging.  More on this later....

On Saturday, KD2JEQ and I had done an expedition to a park in Macoupin County as a shake-down cruise.  During that operation, we found some serious issues that related to one of the mag mounts.  First I thought it was a bad 40 meter resonator, then the mag mount itself.  I finally decided that it was the short Hustler mast itself and replaced that.  So, with a new resonator, new mag mount and new short mast, 40 meters SHOULD HAVE WORKED OK (and did so when the car was stopped).  More on this later....

The long mast had the resonators for 80 and 20, and the short mast had the one for 40.  The resonators were tuned pretty much for CW, but the glorious (I love it) tuner in the IC746 Pro tuned them for SSB on 20 and 40 without a whimper.  In front of both of those (on the van) was the antenna for 2 meters.  

The route was planned for 13 counties, beginning about 30 miles from home (BROW) and ending at home (ADAM).  We were in BROW at 1700z even though we weren't quite to the planned starting point.  Operation proceeded as designed, until we reached highway speeds and found that signals on 40 meters seemed to be cutting out....again....  At rest, all seemed fine.  Grrrrr.  Signals on 20 were good enough, but there were not a lot of stations to work.  OM2VL was loud, but where were the rest of the Europeans????  Maybe the Germans were all tired out by the WAG test on Saturday?  I kept returning to 20 for several counties, but after MNRD, no one responded.  If you don't get spotted, you don't get much action.   Somehow I forgot the memo about 80 at the "top and bottom of the hour" and went there on more of a random basis and didn't work much on that band until about 2200z.  Unlike last year, when the 80 meter resonator got wet and quit working (weren't we glad to not have THAT to deal with again???), 80 seemed to work really well.  I called CQ on 146.55 from several counties and never heard a peep.

However (isn't there always a "however"?): the laptop battery was not very strong and required me to hook it to the charger frequently.  This put some noise into the radio on 20 and 40; but on 80 it was awful.  Basically, I could either keep the laptop alive or work 80 CW but not both.  This became a serious handicap as the day wore on.  Note to self: get a new laptop battery, or at least have a couple of charged spares that can be swapped.  

The forty meter antenna continued to frustrate while the car was in motion.  I finally got disgusted enough that we pulled off the road and moved the forty meter resonator to the mast with the 80 and 20.  This required getting on top of the van.  I had the foresight to take along a short step ladder, but it still was a struggle, reminding me that I'm not the specimen I was 20 years ago.  Or maybe I was never the specimen I was 20 years ago?  But I digress....  When I got back down and checked the radio, no longer would the tuner match the 40 meter resonator, on either phone or CW, it wouldn't match 20 or 80, either.   Back up onto the van....change back.  Insert gnashing of teeth.  Next note to self.  Figure out the 40 meter antenna problem.

When stopped, I had a surprising amount of success on 40 SSB and even a pretty decent run in SCOT....until the slow-scan wizard started up on top of me.  Despite the inspirational sermons digested earlier in the day, I confess I made some less-that-inspiring pronouncements regarding that individual's lineage and well-being in the presence of my spouse/driver.   I simply did not have time to put on an antenna for 75 phone. It would probably have been a good idea to have included it.  I also found, when stopped, that I could hear a LOT of stations who simply never heard me at all.  I expected to have trouble breaking the pileups on rovers and mobiles, and they had some great ones!  But even when no one else was calling, many simply did not hear me. I'm sure part of the issue was the difference between stopped vs. in motion, as there are always problems with either engine noise or line noise when one is tooling down the highway.  It was, nevertheless, discouraging to miss so many multipliers that I could clearly hear.  I guess "a hundred watts is a hundred watts", but antennas make a world of difference.  I'd be very interested in reports comparing signals from the various mobile and rover stations, and I'm guessing mine was way down the dB list.

One item that has to be included here is the role that KB9CES played, and has played, for many years, by driving, navigating, anticipating stops, noticing county lines (when I don't), dodging deer and distracted drivers, interpreting my miscellaneous hand signals and remaining calm in the midst of my rantings, growlings and other expressions of frustration.  She is truly a saint.  And no, she's not available for rent to other mobile operations.  Thank you. Sweetie!

We wound up in GREE, not in ADAM.  I knew that JERS, CALH, PIKE and ADAM were covered, so we had emphasized the counties where we were "the only game in town".  That meant we were over an hour from home at 0100z, which wasn't nearly as bad as in some years past.  Arriving at home at 10 pm local, I exported my log to Cabrillo.

<Insert screams of anguish>

Apparently when I changed to the club call in N1MM, while I changed to the W9AWE database, I did not change the "sent call", so the file showed N9JF instead of W9AWE.  This was easy to fix. However  (I loathe that word....), I also apparently neglected to select "Rover" as the entrant type.  Even though I changed the "ROVER QTH" in the configuration each time we changed counties, the SENT QTH was missing from every entry in the Cabrillo file.  I wondered why the log kept telling me that stations were dupes when I knew I had not worked them yet in the new county.  In addition, for the county line/corner stations worked, even though the multiple counties were shown in the log file, they did not export into the Cabrillo file.

I'm hoping that somehow, eventually, I can reconstruct my log properly.   As painful as it is to log on paper and type it into Excel later, I am seriously considering going back to that!  Did I mention that the laptop battery kept going dead or that the "map light" in the van didn't illuminate the keyboard?

OK, enough ranting.  I've probably lost most of you by now anyhow.

Despite all of that, I feel good about the event.  There was a tremendous amount of cheerleading done by various individuals, several clubs made significant efforts to get members on the air, either at home or as portables;  and the feedback that had come in so far with logs indicates that folks had a good time. Thank you all for coming to the party, and please get those logs in!

73, Jim N9JF