New England QSO Party
Call: K1EP/M
Operator(s): K1EP
Station: K1EP/M
Class: SO Mobile LP
QTH: New England
Operating Time (hrs):
Summary:
Band CW-Dig Qs Ph Qs
------------------------
80: 5 0
40: 214 0
20: 255 0
15: 13 0
10: 0 0
------------------------
Total: 487 0 Mults = 47 Total Score = 45,778
Club: Yankee Clipper Contest Club
Comments:
The weather turned out to not be a factor, at least where I was driving, which
turned out to be about 500 miles. I got a late start because the weather was
so nice on Saturday morning, as I stayed at the Nearfest flea market a little
longer than anticipated. On Saturday, the plan was to make a counterclockwise
loop around eastern and central Massachusetts, starting in Franklin. I got to
Franklin by the start of the contest, but unfortunately, I could not find a
suitable place to operate until 20 minutes into the contest. Murphy had
started to pay a visit by then. For some inexplicable reason, the first dozen
or so QSOs had the time stamp off by an hour and a half. By the time I noticed
it, it had corrected itself. Must have been a feature of Windows that I wasn't
aware of. Although the location I picked wasn't great, I stayted there for the
first hour. I found another location shortly after that and did another half
hour there. The next stop was supposed to be Hampshire, but before I realized
it, I was in Hampden. I figured N1BAA was in Hampshire and would give out a
lot of the county, so I skipped it. It was there that I discovered that I was
having problems with the 12V to the radio. The radio is sensitive to voltage
and would shut down if it dropped below 11V. Apparently the powerpole
connections that I had, which were several years old, had loosened up enough
that there wasn't good contact and the IR drop would cause the radio to cut out
intermittently, sometimes in the middle of a QSO. I thought I had fixed it and
decided to press on to the next stop, which was Worcester at a Mass Pike rest
stop. I spent some more time there debugging the problem and when it got
worse, I finally gave up for the night, about three or four hours earlier than
I had planned. I figured going back home, getting some sleep and attacking the
problem in the morning would be a better idea. I ended up with about 150Qs,
which wasn't great. Sunday morning, I redid many of the powerpole connections
to the radio and accessories, which greatly improved the situation. I found
some of them had worked their way loose and weren't fully inserted in the
plastic connector. A good thing to check periodically. I headed out to my
first county, the usually rare Suffolk, spending about an hour there and fixing
the last of the 12V problems again. I got there early and picked a good
location, working RD3A in another contest before the start. Next stop was
Essex, only staying about a half hour there. It seemed that the rate was
slowing down a bit and it showed in the next two counties, Rockingham and
Strafford, where I only had a total of about 35 Qs. It picked up in York at
the I95/Rt1 rest stop. This rest stop links I95 and Route 1, so I got off of
I95 to find lunch. I did find a good lunch, but the traffic and slower cars on
Route 1 wasted a lot of time getting to Cumberland. It was late afternoon at
that point and the rates had picked up. If I hadn't had so many problems and
wasn't so tired, I would have done another couple more counties up in Maine,
but decided to head home and finish up the last hour in my home county,
Middlesex. Overall, rates were better this year than in previous years. There
were times when the meter was over 200 and stayed over 100 for nearly an hour.
Most of my activity was on 20 and 40. I tried 15 and didn't hear too much, so
I never ventured to 10. 80 would have been fine if I stuck it out Saturday
night. But 80 also affects my engine control circuitry and since I had to idle
the car to maintain a decent operating voltage, I didn't operate there a lot. I
apologize to those when I might have suddenly stopped transmitting in the middle
of the Q. At times the radio would cut out and a power reset would set the
radio to 5W. There was a time when the signals were loud enough that I kept
running at 5W! QRP mobile is not something I would recommend, but it did work
for a while. Thanks again for all the Qs and hope everyone had fun. I hope to
fix all those annoying problems by next year.
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.hornucopia.com/3830score/
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