Kansas QSO Party - 2023
Call: K0S
Operator(s): W0BH
Station: K0S
Class: Mobile SO Mixed LP
QTH: 24 KS counties
Operating Time (hrs): 14.9
Summary:
Band CW Qs Ph Qs Dig Qs
----------------------------
80: 21 0
40: 236 43
20: 632 447
15: 209 0
10:
6:
----------------------------
Total: 1098 490 0 Mults = 54 Total Score = 230,796
Club:
Comments:
Log has been submitted to the QSO party sponsor.
The 2023 Kansas QSO Party by W0BH as K0S/m
This year's KSQP planning was a whirlwind, especially the week before! With 110
degree temperatures the first few days of the week, and high triple digits until
Friday, staying indoors to plan was an easy decision to make. County activations
started coming in with several weeks to go and it was great to hear that a
number out-of-state mobiles and rovers were once again headed this way.
Thanks to a number of ops being willing to adjust their routes slightly, or even
giving me a choice of routes, the maps started turning green. It paid off with
all counties once again active on CW and SSB, and all but two of them active on
Saturday! A big thanks to Duffey/KK6MC, who, on Thursday, surprised all of us by
coming up from New Mexico. He covering my suggested western counties in mixed
mode to turn the Map by Mode completely green.
This year we had 58 1x1 calls active. Several ops called with last-minute
cancellations and gave me permission to put out their calls for our very popular
spelling challenge. Four calls went out at times from the IC7000 to the Hustler
verticals on the roof of the Chevy Astro van! I got up early Friday morning
before the heat set in to put in the four big deep-cycle batteries and make sure
everything worked. It did. I also tried the KSQP Hub Spotting Page and posted a
test spot. It worked, too.
The weather forecast was for a front to come through Friday night and cool
things down. Thunderstorms without much rain boomed during the night, but by
morning, things had settled down, at least in south-central Kansas. The cool(er)
air felt positively balmy, and the overcast sky meant I would actually be able
to see the computer screen! And XYL, Lorna/k0why, had blocked out her weekend to
be able to drive for me. Here we go!
Saturday
After a good breakfast, I headed out solo to the three-county line just a few
miles from our farm and arrived right on time. I fired up the logging computer
and radios and found out my backspace and space bar keys didn't work. Of course
they had worked the day before. A computer restart didn't solve the problem.
Blowing air under the keys didn't solve the problem. Rather than waste more
time, I got out my backup computer. That also had a spacebar problem (I could
have used tab), but the "B" key didn't work. What's going on? Both
computers worked fine last night.
Troubleshooting time. I popped the spacebar key and the "B" key off
and cleaned the switches. There were tiny bits of sand or rock under there, so
that solved the problem. Then the "B" key wouldn't go back on. I just
left the switch bare and dealt with it. My first contact in the log on 7037 was
W5LXS, with W9DC right there as well. Conditions were excellent on 40 and 20m,
but I left the line with ops still calling so I could go pick up Lorna and get
to the rest of my route.
It was so busy at first that I didn't need to spot myself. During the first
slowdown, I tried the KSQP Hub Spotting Page and just got an error message.
That's exactly what happened all last year. I was only able to spot a few times
and heard from many ops that they had the same experience. I can only assume
that the site was not up to the load being placed on it. It works fine now that
the QSO party is over. I'll follow up with the site webmaster once again, but
things will have to change if I'm to recommend the site for next year.
Our Saturday route took us south and southwest through a number of counties in
which I was the only operator. I made sure to give time to both CW and SSB, and
it was busy on both modes. On CW, my plan was to put out the extra calls while
driving between county lines, then work the lines from K0S since they included
the counties we'd been driving through to get there. That minimized dupes and it
worked quite well. On SSB, it was easier to explain the four calls, so I started
making all four calls available to ops. I would give K0S first, then ask if they
were collecting 1x1 calls. If they said yes, they got three more calls and were
quite pleased. At a three-county line, they could log 12 QSOs! Later, as ops
started figuring out what was going on, I was able to give out all four calls on
CW as well. Sometimes I would get dead air afterwards and didn't log the other
three, but at the end, that rarely happened. Really good ops out there!
I also got the question of how I could keep everything straight in my log. As
you can see on my downloadable route schedule, I number each county and assign a
letter to each county line. For example, my first county line was MCP/MRN/HVY.
MCP was 1, MRN was 2, HVY was 3. The line was 1A, so when I logged a QSO, I put
1A in the field where RST usually goes (I made it a text field). My code for all
four calls was Z, so 1AZ meant I gave out all three counties to all four calls.
I had codes for individual calls, and no code meant my call, K0S. I teach
computer science and enjoy programming, so it was easy to write a program to
split the logs out and expand them based on the code.
I honestly can't remember much about Saturday other than trying to keep
counties, county lines and multiple calls straight. I kept a map of which
counties needed me on CW, SSB or both and tried to follow that as best I could.
For example, if I was in a county in which the other ops were CW-only, I would
run more SSB. I realize now that I was so busy I didn't talk to Lorna much on
Saturday. The pileups on both CW and SSB were crazy in each new county or when I
started running a different 1x1 call. I do remember looking up while heading
west in Barber county. I was amazed at the beauty of the rolling hills of
prairie grass in all directions. And then dit dit and more pileup! By the way, I
did finally get used to the missing "B" key :) As the sun went down,
it was great to hear 40m and 80m really active! I was able to work a few Kansas
1x1 stations at county lines while driving to the final three-county line.
We ended a very successful day with 800 QSO lines in my log. Remember that some
of those lines each represent 12 contacts, so I really had no idea how many
contacts I'd made, but I knew I was tired! We still had an hour drive back to
the farm where I put two batteries on the charger (one battery runs the radio
about 7 hours of continuous operation), backed up my computer log, answered a
few emails, updated the web site, and crashed.
Sunday
We took off early on Sunday in order to start in Saline county and head north.
Conditions at the start were good and got better. Most of the northern counties
were well-covered by CW mobiles, so my emphasis was on SSB. Not that I didn't
get lots of CW in as well!
The day was sunny but not oppressively hot. The first county-line stop at
Ellsworth/Lincoln (ELS/LCN) was amazing and could have continued, but I had to
move on. A Sunday highlight was a visit with W0NO, where Alan was running N0O on
SSB. In years past, Tim/AB0S would run N0S on CW from there as well, but Tim
moved to Nebraska. I offered to run some CW for Alan so the N0O call would be
out there for CW ops to get. As I moved from Lincoln county to Alan's Mitchell
county, I had another good run using N0S, then spotted Alan's farm by his big
antennas! I watched him operate for a bit, then Lorna and I ate our lunches
while chatting with him. It was a great visit and reminded me how much fun I had
a number of years ago visiting 15 or so ops during my mobile run.
After putting out K0S/W0A/N0T/K0B on CW from Mitchell county (everyone had the
system down by then), I moved from Cloud into Ottawa county on SSB. I can't
remember for sure who the op was, but when I gave him Ottawa, he said,
"Thanks for the Sweep!". I was about to congratulate him for working
all 105 counties, when he said, "I even worked N0J!". His sweep was
working all 57 of our spelling word 1x1 calls plus Jon/N0JK. Jon used the 1x1
call N0J which matched his call and was his name spelled backwards. As I write
this, several ops posted 3830 reports of 100+ counties, so our ops were really
out there and available once again. After log-checking, I'll be able to see who
worked all 58 1x1 calls. That's quite a feat, too.
I also enjoyed getting reports of the W0C operation. Scott/N0ZB emailed me a few
weeks before the party wondering about hosting a Kansas Youth category
operation. Sarah/KE0YXG and Emily/KF0GNS apparently made quite an impression (a
good one!) and word got around. We've gone quite a few years without a Kansas
Youth entry, so thanks, Scott, for making that happen, and a big thanks to Sarah
and Emily for giving it a try. Please come back next year!
The rest of the day was a blur until we ended up back where we started at the
three-county line. With 15 minutes to go, 51 K0S contacts made it into the log,
and I ran the other three calls as well! After a "switch to voice"
request with three minutes to go, another 24 contacts in the log for a total of
75. We ended Day 2 with another 400 lines in the log. And thanks to the ops who
stuck around afterwards to say hi!
Stats
We operated 14.9 hours, 592 miles, 1588 K0S/m Qs, 3893 combined Qs, 498 unique
calls, 59 K0S/m dupes, one radio.
States not worked ------- : RI HI AK SD
VE worked --------------- : QC ON MB SK AB BC NB
KS worked (11 counties) - : LEA COF GRE WOO FIN ALL NEO WIL JAC THO JOH
DX worked (7 countries) - : HA OM DL SP F KP4 SM
Overall combined rate : 261/hr (K0S+W0A+N0T+K0B+N0S)
Six-hour Rates (K0S)
------- Sat --- Sat --- Sun Q/hr
----- 14Z-20Z 20Z-02Z 14Z-20Z
2023 -- ran 4 calls at 261/hr
2022 -- 121 ---- 83 --- 118
2021 -- 126 ---- 87 --- 149
2020 -- 148 --- 145 --- 251
2019 -- 104 ---- 90 --- 145
2018 -- too many stops to deliver T-shirts!
2017 -- 120 --- 102 --- 192
2016 -- 104 --- 137 --- 192
2015 -- 114 --- 108 --- 101
2014 -- 109 --- 111 --- 127
2013 -- 124 --- 109 --- 172
2012 -- 114 --- 124 --- 134
2011 -- 120 ---- 86 --- 106
2010 --- 86 ---- 67 --- 103
2009 -- 145 --- 114 --- 164
K0S/m County Breakdown (in visited order, dupes not included)
Saturday (385 miles)
01 MCP 52 McPherson
02 MRN 55 Marion
03 HVY 55 Harvey
04 SED 46 Sedgwick
05 SUM 62 Sumner
06 KIN 61 Kingman
07 HPR 63 Harper
08 BAR 70 Barber
09 COM 89 Comanche
10 KIO 88 Kiowa
11 PRA 59 Pratt
12 EDW 55 Edwards
13 HOG 53 Hodgeman
14 FOR 52 Ford
15 PAW 36 Pawnee
16 STA 86 Stafford
17 RIC 67 Rice
18 REN 67 Reno
Sunday (207 miles)
19 SAL 76 Saline
20 ELS 78 Elsworth
21 LCN 92 Lincoln
22 MIT 20 Mitchell
23 CLO 58 Cloud
24 OTT 67 Ottawa
01 MCP 49 McPherson
02 MRN 16 Marion
03 HVY 19 Harvey
Special thanks to the following ops for 10 or more contacts:
39: W9DC
36: VE3YT
32: N5RZ
27: NS2N
26: N6MU
25: K7SS
24: N8II
22: K7SV OM2VL
20: K9CW VE5KS
19: N6GP
18: K3TW KE6GFI W8BZY
17: N5EKO W5LXS WA0MHJ
16: WB9HFK
15: K2DFC KE0TT
14: N2CU
13: W7GF
12: K0I KA9VVQ NE8P NO5W VA3IDD W1FJ WA6URY
11: AB7BB K4BAI N4IJ N4UC NX3A W1END
10: AK7G KC0ZVN KI5GNH KJ5AMB VE3KP W7ON WA8ZBT
1x1 stations worked (4) : K0A N0Q W0K W0S
Other Kansas worked (2) : K0KCK KD0JTR
W0BH Award Winners - First Place - Very Honorable Mention
-------------------------------------------------------------
Most overall Qs ---- W9DC/39 ----- VE3YT/36 ------- N5RZ/32
Most CW Qs --------- N5RZ/32 ----- VE3YT/29 ------- W9DC/27
Most PH Qs --------- KE6GFI/18 --- W9DC/12 VA3IDD/12
Most counties ------ VE3YT/23 ---- W9DC/22 -------- N5RZ/21
AFTERWARDS
Logs are coming into the log respository from the Log Submission page on the
KSQP web site. Remember to email me a separate FT8 log since we score FT8 logs
separately, and they can be in any format. Also remember to log county line
contacts on one line per county.
Another big, BIG THANKS to Bruce/WA7BNM and Trey/N5KO for making log submission
available to us again this year. It saves me a tremendous amount of time by
letting me return emails instead of collect logs. Bruce is also the one in
charge of the 3830 pages we're all using to post our scores and comments. Be
sure to post yours!
THANKS to the sponsors including the ARRL, ops, clubs, KS0KS bonus station crew,
and support teams (log-checking/AD0DX, web/KB0RWI and stamps/KI5TE) who made
this fifteenth Kansas QSO Party so much fun. You are all much appreciated and we
couldn't do it without you! Hope to see you all again next year ..
73, Bob/w0bh K0S/m
2023 KSQP Coordinator
QPC #31
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.3830scores.com/
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