[PaQSO] NK8Q Summary from Clinton County

[Schreiner, Mark]

  Thanks to ALL who participated this year.  I had a blast operating 
portable QRP from CLInton this year.  Having recently moved from LEH, in 
mid-June I was still not unpacked and don't have a home QTH hamshack set 
up here yet in State College (CEN), so going out portable seemed ideal.  
I investigated what counties were traditionally rare over the past 
several years so that I could help bolster one of them so that people 
would not complain that they missed that one anyway.  I think for the 
most part I was successful, although I know I didn't work EVERYONE, but 
it was gratifying to get so many "Thanks for the new one!" comments, 
even late into the contest (mostly from fresh operators with less than 
200 QSOs).  If I missed you, it wasn't for lack of effort!  I sure 
didn't see CLI on the list of most wanted from anyone on this list!

I arrived at the Holiday Pines Campground, located just a few miles off 
of I-80 near Loganton in Clinton County around noon on Friday to start 
setting up the antennas.  I rented Cabin #68, which is a rustic cabin 
(with electricity) at the far edge of the campground with room to 
stretch out antennas with nice tall trees.  Traffic from I-80 sounded 
like it was less than 1/4 mile away.  I put up two multi-band HF 
horizontal antennas that were mounted N-S and E-W both at about 50'.  I 
then wasted time putting up a 6m dipole (inverted-V) about 30', 1/4 wave 
ground plane for 2m FM also up about 30' and a 10m mag-mount, each with 
dedicated radios to monitor for activity from possible mobile stations 
coming through Clinton County along I-80, or maybe for QSOs in nearby 
counties at least.  No QSOs on those, but the 2 bigger HF antennas did a 
great job otherwise.

I had plenty of problems, mostly related to Windows 7 with my new 
laptop, USB-Serial adapters and drivers for K1EL WinKey.  Eventually I 
resolved those problems (after another trip back to State College), but 
then found that while there was a little extra noise on most of the HF 
bands, the extra noise on 75/80m was TERRIBLE, and eventually related to 
the 120 VAC to 19.5 VDC power brick for the laptop.  My eventual 
work-around for that was to either unplug or turn off the brick to 
reduce the noise, which gave me about 2 hours of operating time.  I also 
found I could call CQ with it plugged in and then unplug to listen, but 
that was a PITA (maybe next year I'll devise a relay driven off the K1EL 
keyer such that while transmitting it switches the power supply on and 
turns it off when receiving.  If anyone else has a better solution 
please let me know (Asus G73J laptop, adapter model ADP-150NB, made in 
China by Delta Electronics, no FCC certification noted).

The last problem I had I won't give many details, but suffice it to say 
that I suffered some symptoms of food poisoning at 2 AM on Sunday (about 
7 hours after eating the pizza that was delivered to the campground, I 
guess I should have had some bourbon to sterilize it better).  I found 
out that the bathroom was a lot farther from the cabin than I was really 
comfortable with in the middle of the night!  It didn't slow me down for 
the 2nd half of the event, though.

Overcoming the problems as best I could I barely made it on the air just 
as the contest started.  N1MM logger did a great job!  It helps me 
become a better contester.  I should learn to use more of the features, 
and every contest I find something new that I like about it.

Oh, my rig was an Elecraft K2 at 5W with a Heil ProSet Plus and of 
course the K1EL keyer with Bencher BY-1 paddles.  Here is my summary, 
including the 2x multiplier for QRP (in the Pts column):

Missed Counties:  CLI, FUL, MTR, NUM & VEN

62 of 67 counties worked, 51 of 84 ARRL/CRRL plus one DX, total of 114 
mults (not counting 2x for QRP)

Band        Mode        QSOs        Pts        Sec        Mult
1.8            CW               6            20          2
1.8            Ph                1               2         0
3.5            CW             127        508        8
3.5            Ph              124        246        25
7.0            CW            130        520        45        1
7.0            Ph                65        124        13        1
14             CW              50        200        19

Total        Both        503            1620    112        2
Score:  185,880

Wow, I think this is my best PAQP score ever, and here we are at the 
bottom of the sunspot cycle, or at least barely starting to come out of 
it, and a couple of days before the weekend there were at least two days 
with no sunspots on the side of the sun facing the earth!  Thanks also 
to those of you who told me I had a strong signal, but I'm sure there 
were some who struggled as well.  Had I not taken a few minutes for a 
ragchew with KC2ZA (on 75m SSB) and later WA8REI (in Michigan on 40m 
SSB) for about 1/2 hour my score could have been a bit higher.

My goals for this year's PAQP:

1)  Have fun -- Yup, had a blast, the WX was perfect too for operating 
outside with leaves falling all around me!
2)  Activate a "rare" county -- Check, I think we covered that one!
3)  Set a new county record -- current record was about 93k, and I had 
broken that by the time I went to bed on Saturday night.  Sunday was 
nothing but icing on the cake!
4)  Try again to get top QRP station, I'm usually beaten by Goody, K3NG, 
by about 10k points.  Thanks to Goody's goal of getting a clean sweep 
while my goal was raw points I finally beat him by about 25k!  Not sure 
if anyone else operated QRP with a higher score, but we'll find out 
eventually.
5)  Have fun, oh, we covered that already, but it sure was fun.  Maybe I 
should have said "Get out of State College during Homecoming weekend."  
That was almost covered except for the trip back to fix USB problems!

73 to all and I'm looking forward to next year!

Mark, NK8Q