[InHam] K9ZF, Crazy Dan, the contest guy is at it again

[Dan Evans]

Hello!

The Indiana QSO Party is coming up *Saturday May 2, 2009.   And I'm 
making plans for a portable expedition :-)
Yes, I know it's Derby day, but I'm not much into horse racing anyway, 
hi hi.

All of the details for the Indiana QSO Party:
http://hdxcc.org/inqp/index.html

Here is the plan, so far.  I'm going to take my camping gear to a 
hilltop on the county line of Washington and Scott county, near Leota.  
I'll also be bringing along my Yaesu FT897D, a laptop for logging and 
keying, and at least 2 deep cycle batteries for power.  [more if I can 
find some to borrow:-)  ]

Last week I made 3 wire dipoles for portable use.  One for 75 meters, 
one for 40 meters, and one for 20.  Luckily, I have a big spool of 20awg 
wire :-)   I was planning to use my LDG Z11pro tuner to cover the rest 
of the HF bands, but Murphy has stricken already and it seems to have 
died.  So I will have to be happy with those three bands unless I can 
bum another tuner.  I plan to use my bow, or fishing pole, to launch 
some twine up into the tree tops to pull up the wire antennas.  Luckily 
the camp site has a lot of big hard wood trees to support my antennas :-)

So here is the plan.  I am going to head up to the hilltop Saturday 
morning.  Setup my camp, and get the antennas up and the station running 
by noon, when the contest starts.  The contest will run until midnight.  
So I will run the whole 12 hours of contest, and then hit the sleeping 
bag.   Sunday morning I will pack it all in and head for home.

The main idea for the Indiana QSO Party is to work as many Indiana, and 
other stations as possible.  Unfortunately, most of the counties are 
only activated by mobiles, but it is a lot of fun trying to track the 
mobiles as they move from county to county.  But it sure would be nice 
if we could get more home stations involved.  At the same time as the 
INQP there is also the New England QSO Party, and the 7th call area QSO 
party.  Both of these QSO Parties have lots of stations active and 
really help boost the counts for us Indiana stations.

Does this sound like fun to you?  Well grab your sleeping bag and come 
along! 

Do you have a favorite hilltop of your own?  Go for it, I love 
competition!  All of my equipment is junk and homebrew, show me what you 
can do with yours :-)  But fair warning, I play to win, so bring your A 
game, hi hi.   BTW, this is great practice for Field Day.  When is the 
last time your ARES / RACES group had a drill?

Does all of this sound like too much work?  No problem, just fire up 
that home station and dive in. 

Got a couple of friends that are interested?  Then have a multi-op party 
with the QSO Party :-)  

Or put that club station on the air and show everyone what your club 
station can do!  There is a club competition within the INQP, so if I 
can get a couple more guys from the Clark county group to get on, we can 
enter the club competition.

It's fun!  Get on the air and make some noise :-)

Now if I could just talk the guys at the Hoosier DX and Contesting Club 
into adding my favorite VHF bands to the mix...
*

73 and have fun!!
Dan
-- 
Amateur Radio Emergency Service, Clark County Indiana. EM78el
K9ZF /R no budget Rover ***QRP-l #1269 Check out the Rover Resource Page at:
<http://www.qsl.net/n9rla> List Administrator for: InHam+grid-loc+ham-books
Ask me how to join the Indiana Ham Mailing list!