[WIQPmail] WiQP NR0T SO LP mobile

[Rolf Krogstad]

It was a solo effort this year.  I only operated while parked, so that
limited my operating time.  N1MM tells me I had 3:11 off time and 3:49
operating.  But I spent at least 15 minutes in each of the last two
counties dealing with RF issues so those numbers should probably be
reversed.  More about that in a bit.

I operated from seven counties in NW Wisconsin:  Barron, Wabasha, Sawyer,
Bayfield, Douglas, Burnett and Polk.  I started on 20 meters and then moved
to 40 meters with about 25 minutes of operating in each county.

About 45 minutes into the contest, while heading north, I met the
N0IJ-mobile heading south on US-63 near the Barron/Wabasha county line.  It
was a bit hard to see because of all the Qs coming out of the antenna!

It always is fun for me to be called by DX when operating mobile.  This
year DL3DXX and HC1WDT each worked me in two counties and DL3GA in one.

Two weeks ago I put my old antenna mount on the vehicle and tuned the
antenna on each band and did some testing - everything worked great.
Saturday, the day before the contest, I did some final testing after
assembling the station in the car.  Lo and behold, the SWR was sky high on
all bands.

I discovered an intermittent problem in the coax lead to the mount.  So
lopped off a chunk of coax and reattached it to the mount.  But in the
process I noticed that the bolt which allows the angle of the antenna to be
adjusted was a bit stripped.  It made cinching that into place difficult.
The problem is that given the design of the mount if that wasn't cinched
tightly the ground of the coax didn't make good contact with the mount.
Too late to go to the hardware store, but I was able to tighten it down and
everything checked out.

Things worked great until the last two counties when that bolt loosened and
RF started to feed back into the computer and Microkeyer2 rig interface
causing lots of problems with erratic keying and locking-up.  I lost a few
QSOs and no doubt caused some "what is that guy doing!" thoughts in a few
other operators minds!

I was able to limp through the last two counties, but my operating time was
limited because of reboots and attempts at antenna mount adjustments. I
imagine if I had removed the antenna while driving there would have been no
problem. "and so it goes..."

It was a great day with warm weather, overcast but no rain.  A good time
was had by all.

Band     QSOs     Pts  Mul   Mt2
     7      57     114   28    1  (CW)
     7       6       6    1    0  (SSB)
    14      64     128   23    0  (CW)
 Total     127     248   52    1
Score: 16,644 plus 3500 mobile bonus points = 20,144.

The six SSB QSOs were with my father, KE0RR.  We managed to hook up from 6
of the 7 counties.  Despite the lengthening skip we were just barely able
to connect 10 minutes before the end of the contest to complete a POLK
county Wisconsin to POLK county Minnesota QSO.

73
Rolf   NR0T
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