Texas QSO Party
Call: WB0TEV/M
Operator(s): WBOTEV, KK5MR
Station: WB0TEV
Class: Multi-Op Mobile LP
QTH: TX Mobile
Operating Time (hrs): 15
Summary:
Band CW Qs Ph Qs Dig Qs
----------------------------
160:
80: 1
40: 204
20: 237
15: 1
10:
6:
2:
UHF:
----------------------------
Total: 0 443 0 Mults = 105 Total Score = 125,030
Club:
Comments:
TxQP 2010 Soapbox de WB0TEV & KK5MR.
Mark (KK5MR, ex-N4CMB) and I have hit the road for the TxQP in the
WB0TEV-mobile 3 of the past 4 years (in what was surely a fluke, we even took
2nd place in the TXM MO category in 2007), but itâ??s always been pretty much a
Saturday only affair for us.
After largely sitting it out in 2009 I was encouraged by Chuck NO5W to re-enter
the fray again this year and for the first time we over-nighted out of town and
put in a full day on Sunday.
Boy was 2010 a blast! 40m finally acted as it should instead of going way too
long all day long. We turned in our best score ever running around NE Texas on
SSB.
Since my son is now in college at LeTourneau University in Longivew, TX (Gregg
county) we decided we'd overnight there and thus turned the typical 2 hour 5
county drive from Greenville (Hunt County) into a 6 hour 15 county journey.
Like so many, we started off the morning in the rain, but thankfully the rain
showers were intermittent and we were in the clear when we had to change out a
flaky 40m coil. (Thankfully I had a spare).
We've never been in it to necessarily rack up a huge score, but to have fun and
give out some of the scarcer NE Texas counties to the deserving. I'm sure I
made NR5M happy when after working me in Delta county and expressing regret
that he'd missed me during my brief foray into Lamar, I turned around and drove
about a mile back to re-enter Lamar, work him from there and then head back into
Delta.
Next year I think I'll do more county line operations despite having a hard
time coming to terms with the idea that I can really be two places at once. (If
I could only work that trick in real life!)
Upon arriving in Longview mid afternoon Saturday we picked up a couple of
fledgling college hams (come on boys, we'z gonna take ya fer a ride,
BWAHAHAH!), stuffed them in the back seat and gave them a taste of mobile
contesting. One of the high points of the trip was working Fernando, Z21BB in
Harare, Zimbabwe on 15m SSB whilst motoring down I-20 headed for Smith county.
VERY COOL! After an hour long jaunt thru Smith, Gregg, Harrison, Rusk and
Panola counties we swung back to campus and took about 3 hours off to visit my
son and have dinner.
The planned 80m operation from 0000-0200Z that evening conducted from a back
corner of the college campus was a bust with only 1 QSO produced on that band,
so the 80m coil came off and the 40m/20m/15m/10m 4 coil appendage went back on
to the Hustler fold-over mobile mast mounted to the right rear fender of my
trusty 1986 Pontiac Parisienne.
The Pontiac had taken the place of the old 1977 Chevy Impala of 2007 and
previous. The rig remained an FT-757 of similar vintage which I'd bought from
KK5MR some years ago. In keeping with our mid-1980â??s technology model we also
log using pencil and paper, although post contest the data is entered into a
spread sheet and also converted to a Cabrillo file to make life a little easier
on NO5W, but I digress.
After breakfast Sunday AM we hit the road again, and as it turned out we made
even more QSOs in the 6 hours on Sunday than we had all day Saturday. I guess
we were getting smarter.
In order to just barely get into Trinity county we ended up going down a narrow
gravel/dirt road from Houston County into the Davy Crockett National Forest. It
was a gorgeous sunny Sunday morning and we even saw a couple of deer cross the
road in front of us. Once the GPS assured us that we were comfortably across
the county line we went to town on 20m and had a great run before heading back
to the main road. While in Trinity we worked Carlos, TI8II for the 5th time
having also QSO'ed with him from Panolo, Shelby, Nacogdoches and Angelina
counties.
Looking back at the log afterwards I saw that we only made 1 QSO on 40m from
Trinity (an out of state QSO no less) so sorry to my fellow Texans if you
needed that one on SSB and couldn't get us.
Not surprisingly, a check of the log shows that with one exception ALL of the
Texas QSOs were on 40m. Usually we'll work something way out in far west Texas
on 20m but the one 20m TX QSO was essentially line of sight with W5NAC while we
rolled past Nacogdoches on Sunday.
In a fitting climax, as we were in our last county (RAINS) in the waning
minutes of the contest we heard N5XTR/m running another 4 county intersection
that would get us some new mults. Joel had quite a pile-up going (as he did
most of the weekend). We kept trying,.... and he kept working somebody else,
until in the last minute of the contest he called WB0TEV/m and we managed to
grab those 4 QSOs shortly before the 2010 TxQP went QRT as did we.
All told we activated 29 counties in East Texas and worked several mobiles in
multiple counties including N5XTR(12), W2IK(8), W5TM(6), KK5LO(6), N5DO(5),and
K5NA (5, no 4....drat!).
This year was all SSB with a band breakdown of
80M:1 40m:204 20m:237 & 15m:1. 443 total.
Mults were 71 TX counties, 30 States, 2 VE Provinces (Ontario & Nova Scotia)
and 2 DX (Costa Rica and Zimbabwe).
Special mention goes to Jeff, N8II in WV who is a regular in the TxQP. He
graciously gave me his run freq on 20m once on Saturday allowing me a clear
spot to get in a great run through Franklin county while he went off to work
CW. All told we worked him from 17 of the 29 counties we activated.
In state, our top two were W5CT(10 QSOS) and NR5M (9).
Kudos to Chuck and the rest of the TXQP gang from Houstonâ??s Northwest Amateur
Radio Society for evangelizing, organizing and propagating the best state QSO
party in the nation. Is it Sept. 24 2011 yet?
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.hornucopia.com/3830score/
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