[PaQSO] PAQSO 2009 - Venango Results

[Randy George]

Our story.

 

What can I say. Team N3ZK with 1 member short, set out this year with 1
goal, to beat the current Venango County Multi-Op Points record set back in
2000 by N3JQW at 100,993 points.  

 

We began our journey Thursday evening by leaving Pittsburgh after work and
traveling up to my parents house in Venango County.  2 hours later, Frank,
N3FB and myself were at my parents unpacking the rope and compound bow to
get a head start on replacing a lower rope in the main antenna run's tree.
After a quick trip to the beer distributor for some beverages and a jaunt
over to Home Depot for some last minute parts for the tennis ball and arrow
contraption, we were trying to get this rope replaced before night fall.
First attempt was perfect, that is until I went to lay the bow down to start
pulling on the fishing line and when I did, the line broke.  Man, that was a
perfect shot too.  We eventually got the rope in to the tree after dusk and
then called it a night for outside work.  Do you know how hard it is trying
to see black rope when it is dark out?  We unpacked the radios and computers
and were off late into the night setting those up and getting the logging
program ready.  Thank god, I was soaking wet!!

 

Friday came along and we attempted to put a new antenna up this year, a
Carolina Windom 160, which turned out to be waaaaaaaaay to long for the
space so we had to take it down and replace it with our normal heavy
hitters.  We strung end to end a Carolina Windom 80 and a 160 end fed long
wire up, which took a little longer than expected due to some minor
difficulties with a bow and arrow and a tree.  Never seen an arrow bend
mid-flight before.  That was a new one.  We ended up with a Carolina Windom
80, A end fed 160 long wire, a hex beam and a Hustler Vertical.  We finished
up around 4ish that evening and prepared for the arrival of Kevin, N3KFD.
After setting him up, we were ready for Saturday.

 

Saturday started out pretty slow, I sat on 20 meter phone looking for
sections for most of the day while Frank was searching for counties and
Kevin was paddling away at CW.  We had a lot of issues this year with the
WB3W logging software.  Must've been my Windows Vista.  I hate Vista!  It
kept crashing and was extremely slow.  If only N3FJP would make a network
version of his PAQSO software!! It soon picked up as the day went on.  We
had a lot of visitors on Saturday including Brian-KB3ORR and his girlfriend,
Kevin-N3KKQ and his wife, Ed-N3ZNI and Dave-K3LGM(From Texas).  Ed and Dave
were running mobile in Dave's new ford pickup truck.  They had a blast!!

 

By nightfall, everyone had left but the three main ops.  Frank was still
searching for counties and multipliers while Kevin and I were hammering away
at CW.  Points, Points, Points!  We ended the evening at 1:00am with approx.
100, 400 points, just shy of the county record and 64 counties, leaving us 4
to go.  Time for bed!!

 

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz  Boy I couldn't wait to sleep as each
night were late ones.

 

We woke up Sunday morning and kept hammering away, not only for points, but
we were so close to having contacted all 67 counties so we kept on a
trucking.  At around 2:00pm, we got our last county (Montour) thanks to
William, N3JIX form Montour County.  Thanks Bill!!! Shortly after the
antennas came down and we were all back on the road heading home.  Boy, what
a weekend.

 

Anyways, we had a fantastic time as always.  Lots of food and fun and it was
great having everyone up at moms.  We finally got Ed and Dave to stop up and
see us on the mobile journey through North Western PA.   Paul, N0VLR was
unable to attend this year as he was in Japan on company assignment leaving
our team of 4 to a team of 3.    I tried to have him take his radio and work
PAQSO from Japan...  Maybe next time.  We sure missed his famous frozen
margaritas and his 5 alarm chili with cornbread.  Oh well, hopefully he will
be available next year.

 

Thanks to all who helped us reach our goals this year and we look forward to
seeing on the radio next year.  QRZ?

 

Randy, N3ZK

 

 

Main Ops:

N3ZK

N3FB

N3KFD

 

Guest Ops:

N3HKQ

KB3ORR

 

Score:

 

160/80 CW-        216

Other CW-         79

SSB-              444

 

Total QSO's-      739

 

Total Score Raw-  130,279.5

 

Bonus Station (4) 800   

 

Total Score Final 131,079.5

 

67 Counties

63 Sections

1 DX