South Carolina QSO Party - 2021
Call: N4CW
Operator(s): N4CW W4TMO
Station: N4CW
Class: Multi-Op MobileCW LP
QTH: Mobile SC
Operating Time (hrs): 06:42
Summary:
Band CW Qs Ph Qs Dig Qs
----------------------------
160:
80: 60 0 0
40: 491 0 0
20: 14 0 0
15:
10:
6:
----------------------------
Total: 565 0 0 CW Mults = 38 Ph Mults = 0 Dig Mults = 0 Total
Score = 85,880
Club: Potomac Valley Radio Club
Comments:
[by Jim, W4TMO]
Isn't it great when trying something new and everything goes right. Left the
house at 6:15AM headed to first stop in SC for QSO Party and arrived 45 mins
early! Within 5 mins a trooper pulls up, great :(. Just curious about the
antennas. Nice guy. Turn the rigs on and the TS590 decides it doesn't like any
antennas now that it's left home. OK, we'll run just the K3. It's a veteran of
these runs anyway. We're up and running from our first countyline!
After the allowed 25 mins per stop, off I go and there's something rattling on
the roof. Sounds small, I'll check it on the next later. Arrive at next county
line, Bert (N4CW) is running, and the noise on the roof turned out to be the
external antenna for cell reception. Weak magnet so it got lashed to the
luggage rack. Fixed.
Couple of stops later and a nice couple pulls along side while I'm stopped on a
gravel road. Woman wants to know if I'm Google mapping. I give a quick
explanation of ham radio and she exclaims "Kinda like CB isn't it!"
There's a flash of how I'll explain the difference, how long it'll take and how
blank the look on their face will become. So my answer is "Yep, pretty
much". Ended the conversation with how I'd build everything as a kid and
my Dad would offer the words of wisdom "Why don't you just pick up the
phone and call him". They left laughing, guess they enjoyed the talk.
On to nightfall, Bert's running 80M as I'm driving thru a small town and the K3
suddenly shuts off. Turn it on, a CQ and it shuts off. It's 14 hrs since I
started driving this AM, fuzziness is beginning to set into my brain. Pull into
parking lot, do a walk around, check connections, try again. Same results so I
decide to call it with an hour left in contest. Plug "home" into
Google maps on my phone and head out.
Something seems odd about the directions and after about 10 mins I'm at a 3 way
stop and Google wants me to continue straight -- onto a dirt path that leads
into the woods. Decide to reboot phone and start over. Won't reboot. Screen
is frozen at 8:03PM, I'm in the middle of nowhere South Carolina, no houses and
no phone! I scan the horizon and decide to head toward the TV tower in the
distance. A sign for Rt 378 comes up, then another that says 23 mi to Sumter
and I know I-95 is between me and Sumter. Salvation! A few minutes later I'm
headed north on I-95 and I know the rest of the way by heart.
So that was my day as a Rover station in the SC QSO Party. The "new"
part? Bert operated from home in Raleigh NC to make 95% of the contacts.
Connected to the rig in the car using Internet via cell towers. Surprisingly,
Verizon kept us connected for a large majority of the time while driving.
It's 8AM Sunday. The K3 problem: turned out to be low voltage as we'd drained
the external battery (oops, my bad). And apparently my cell phone needed to
completely discharge as it came on when I plugged in the charger this AM and all
seems ok. I'll be heading out in an hour for the NC QSO party, remote op again.
Hope it ends with less drama than yesterday.
Thanks to everyone for all the Q's. Wouldn't be a party without ya'all!
[by Bert, N4CW]
I operated remotely TO HIS MOBILE STATION. It was our first attempt at this
remote thing, and operating mobile made it really challenging. Jim engineered
the communications setup, made an operating "desk" for the passenger
seat, and even built the antenna setups (one on the trailer hitch, and two on a
roof rack)...all on a Prius!!! Ignition noise wasn't a problem, and what noise
there was came from the power supplies. I had no control over the situation
while operating...I could only use the keyboard and a vision of N1MM+ that
reflected what was on Jim's laptop in the car. We pretty much licked the latency
problem, but cell communications wasn't 100% reliable and at my end I would
frequently get "pops" when the signal dropped for a few milliseconds,
enough to miss a dit! That usually wasn't a problem, but necessitated lots of
"?" or "AGN?"...then, as a final blow, the batteries were
exhausted with two hours (more or less) to go! All during the event we
maintained cellphone voice communications.
I'll bet remote/mobile a first! But, we definitely maintained "social
distancing"; yet, we managed a fun operation! I apologize for not chatting
much; that was due to the fact that I rarely chat via keyboard, only using a
paddle for that...but we haven't figured how to do the paddle thing yet!
Thanks for all your patience, all y'all...it was a great day!
73 from Jim and me!
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