[PaQSO] NK8Q/CRN Summary

[Mark Schreiner]

I had a great time this year again going to a "rare" county and operating
portable from Cameron County this year.  I was staying at a rental in
Sterling Run, PA, along PA-120 between Driftwood & Emporium.  The QTH was
about 1/2 up the side of a hill and had a beautiful view of the surrounding
mountains with fall colors approaching their peak.  It was very pleasurable
to watch several flocks of Canadian Geese flying south through the valley
during the late afternoons and at night hearing the elk bugling nearby (I
was disappointed not to see any, so I'll have to head back up to Benezette
sometime).

Friday afternoon I set up antennas which included a lightweight (for QRP
backpacking) W5GI Mystery Antenna which I have used several times for both
PAQP & other portable operations, an 88' doublet with 300 ohm twin-lead feed
and a 10/15m fan dipole which I constructed on Friday afternoon.  I didn't
have the usual number of natural antenna supports (aka "trees")  so I
created some make-shift supports that held the other ends of the wire
antennas at 25 to 30' and used a 31' Jackite telescoping pole also.

Just in time for the Friday night net I got the power supply, Elecraft K2 &
microphone connected to test out the QRP portable setup.  I was sitting out
under the stars at a picnic table and thinking "Yeah, life is good!"  While
I wouldn't have minded if it had gotten colder out as I had additional warm
clothes if needed, I did not like the fact that dew was starting to collect
on everything even that early in the evening.  After the net I took the K2
back inside and covered up the rest of the equipment with garbage bags to
keep the dew off of it.  I headed out to Emporium to find a pizza place and
enjoyed a good dinner at the Pizza Palace, then came back to the rental and
headed to bed.

The next morning the whole valley was fogged in until about 10 to 10:30 AM
when the sun was able to get up high enough above the mountains to burn off
the fog, at which time I was able to set up the K2, computer, keyer, etc.  I
had an RS HTX10 connected to my new 10/15m dipole and made some quick QSOs
into Europe, but found most of that activity was for the Scandinavian
Contest.  Still, it sounded promising that 10m was open that early in the
day!  Okay, ready to contest at noon, just a bite of lunch around 11:30 then
good to go!

It was very nice to hear 40m open to the whole state of PA during the
beginning of the contest.  It has been a few years since that was the case.
Sure got things off to a great start.  I started on SSB & then switched to
CW after maybe 45 minutess, keeping decent runs going most of the time.
Even though I was running QRP I found that it was much easier to find a
fairly clear frequency and call CQ than to do search and pounce.  Being in a
"rare" county may have helped as well.  By 1 AM local time I had already
logged over 400 QSOs, was showing a score of 117k and only needed about 7
counties.  I made a quick plan for who would be where on Sunday so I could
hunt down those extra counties to try to get a clean sweep.  I ended up
getting most of them by noon and I think the last few except for my own
county of Cameron by 2 PM.  By shortly after noon I had just broken the
previous Cameron County record of about 159k and by 2 PM I had broken my own
personal record (which I set last year in Clinton) of 187k and at that point
had set my sights on hopefully breaking 200k.  CW seemed to be the quickest
way to get there with 2 points per QSO on CW instead of only 1 point for
SSB, plus CW is much easier to operate (much less stress on the voice).
During the last hour of the contest I broke 200k points for an all time
personal record in the PAQP, missing only Cameron County.  I finished with a
bit over 560 QSOs and somewhere around 117 or 119 multipliers (I'll have to
recheck the log again), plus the 2x multiplier for QRP.  I had a mix of
about 50/50 CW vs SSB ratio and managed 2 QSOs on 160m (what a great
internal tuner in the K2!) with W3TDF & AA3B and only one QSO on 10m.  40m
was by far my best band with 80/75 not too far behind, in contrast with
80/75 being the "money bands" in the last several years.  I had hoped to
catch K8MR/m as they came through but while I worked them in /INN and later
in /JEF I guess I wasn't in the right place at the right time to catch them
while they were in Cameron.  I think another mobile had come through earlier
on Saturday also, but of course I missed that one as well.  Oh well, that is
as close as I've ever gotten to a clean sweep, and after operating in POT,
CLI, MIF, SNY and now in CRN I am getting used to not working my own county!

I had one valid QSO with the bonus station on 40m SSB.  I had actually
logged them there twice before I realized the second was a DUPE.  Would have
been nice to catch K3SMT on other bands/modes, but I missed them elsewhere.

I shut off the radio at 6:01 PM and by 6:01:30 I was starting to drop the
antennas and packing up, and was on the road to State College by 8:30 PM and
home by 10 PM.  Looking through emails from the PA QSO Party Reflector I see
that nobody reported Cameron on their Short List, so I guess I must have
done my job.  It was a pleasure to work from CRN and I came home feeling
fairly relaxed and refreshed.

73 to all and looking forward to it again next year!

Mark, NK8Q