[PaQSO] Party Redux N3LI

[Michael Coslo]

Saturday was beautiful, not too hot, not too cold, great wx.

I was doing a tour of the north central counties.  The band was a bit long right at the start, I couldn't hear W3Y?A from Clinton on 80. But they picked up pretty quickly. Lycoming was FB also. I tried to get to Tioga while on my way to Potter county, but the little road that I should have used to slip over there was gated - after a couple miles. So I turned around, and headed to Potter. I like to operate from Cherry Springs State Park, and while there, met up with Jim, KB3TBX, a club member who was camping and working the party on 6 meters.

Had a bit of a pileup for people needing Potter county.

Then worked my way down to Cameron county. It was a fair trek to the Quehanna Highway, but my laptop needed charged. The inverter makes a bit of RFI, and working mobile form these remote spots, you can get spoiled wit S-0 static. Many of the people I worked were at S-1 or below. Parked at a rest stop at the top of Wyckoff run. Then headed back to Elk county since it was near, and backtracked to Clearfield county.

My only complaint was that I forgot a flashlight, and my Bugcatcher tunes so sharply that 75 meters was like calisthetics, getting out to change taps, all the more since I couldn't see. This slowed me down a little, and I wasn't able to make Centre county. It was always a maybe anyhow.

Slept at home

Sunday, I started out in Juniata, and then Perry. Juniata was interesting. A generous Op told me to take the frequency, and I generated a pile-up for a good while - then disaster struck. ALL of my information disappeared form the screen! It still had the number of QSO's, but otherwise completely blank. That's the sort of thing that gives you a sinking feeling really fast, and I had all these people waiting in line to work Juniata. Sorry to anyone who was waiting and missed me! Restarting the program and rebooting didn't help.

Talk about your sinking feeling.

I shut down operations, and took a look at the computer. That it was still showing the total QSO's indicated that there must be something it still saw.

I went into the program folder,  and looked at the mdb files and the text files, and the information was still there, so I thought I at least could put something together when I got home. Then I remembered that I had the program installation file on the computer. So I copied everything to a thumb drive, then reinstalled the program in a different folder. Started it up, and there everything was! I had to re-enter my info, but I could continue. Must have been the program being corrupted somehow.

This all took some time, so I had to alter the route a little. I ended up doing Franklin and Huntingdon, and finishing up in Fulton county. Franklin and Huntingdon were done from a Mountaintop, and there were all these strange little gray bugs that just loved the car, and really liked to fly inside. They were harmless, but it looked like I had Saint Vitus' dance for a while. When I took off to drive down the mountain to Fulton county, I saw I had more on it than I thought. They didn't want to leave, but the wind was blowing them off one by one - hundreds of them. Got home in time for roast chicken, mashed potatoes and peas.

- 73 de Mike N3LI -