[FQP]W6YX FQP

[Dean Wood]

                    Florida QSO Party

Call: W6YX
Operator(s): N7MH, W6RQ, N6DE
Station: W6YX

Class: SchoolMixed LP
QTH: CA
Operating Time (hrs): 20

Summary:
 Band  CW Qs  Ph Qs
--------------------
   40:   38      4
   20:  267     76
   15:   77     51
   10:   28     42
--------------------
Total:  410    173  CW Mults = 67  Ph Mults = 52  Total Score = 236,334

Club: Northern California Contest Club

Comments:

We went all out in this FQP in memory of K4OJ.  Jim helped raise FQP to what it
is today, and indirectly caused us in the California QSO Party publicity team to
ratchet up our effort to increase participation in CQP.  We've had a record
number of submitted logs two years in a row.  I stayed home from the Visalia
convention this year specifically to participate in FQP and help organize our
W6YX operation, just for Jim.  

I read our soapbox from last year, and realized we could cut and paste nearly
the entire report and use it for this year's commentary!  It was basically the
same contest this year, with a couple of exceptions: this year we had better
band conditions, and there was even more mobile activity.

10m and 15m were WIDE open nearly the entire contest from CA to FL.  10m closed
for a few hours on Sunday, but opened up later for the remainder of the contest.
 However, the issue is that almost all the action in this contest is on 20m
because of the skip that FL has on that band to highly populated areas.  Thus,
there is not much incentive for FL stations to spend some time (or *any* time)
on 15m or 10m unless they are fixed stations, where they will spend bursts
CQing.  As for 20m, it was a giant struggle as usual.  There were a few hours in
our early morning and a few hours in our late afternoon/early evening when 20m
was open from Northern CA to FL.  But between those hours, signals were highly
attenuated.  All the mobiles became S0-S1 signal strength during this time.  QSB
was also heavy at times on 20m.

So, our strategy for a large majority of the contest was to track all the
mobiles on 20m CW, listening for really weak signals with pileups, while milking
10m/15m as much as possible.  It was a wild contrast between working S0 guys on
20m and working guys on 10m who were 599+40dB!

We typically had to wait for pileups on 20m CW to die down in order to be heard.
 Some of the mobiles had great ears.  The N4TO/M group had tremendous ears...
that K1TO is amazing.  He would dig us out every time while others CQ'd in our
face.  I'm fairly certain the K4TO/M group have a defective rig, though, as it
was unable to change modes and was stuck on 14028 or 14029 all weekend.  :)

Sunday morning was fun on 20m when we were chasing K4KG/M through several
counties as they jumped back and forth between CW and SSB!  Mike N7MH would
contact them on CW, check back on them regularly, then tell me that they just
said they moved to 14258 for SSB.  I would quickly jump up there and work them
for a new SSB mult!  This worked out great for several counties until we lost
20m reasonable propagation to FL later in the morning.

NF4A/M was my favorite mobile on Sunday!  A number of times we'd contact him on
20m CW, and then he'd actually ask *us* to QSY to 15m and 10m, CW and SSB,
leaving his 20m CW pileup in the dust!  We loved it when he did this...
thanks!!!

NF4A and KN4Y were the only mobiles we contacted on 10m.  Several of the mobiles
spent some time on 15m CW on Sunday, which we appreciated.  I remember N4BP,
K4BAI, NF4A, and KN4Y were the best at spending some time CQing on 15m CW when
they went through new counties on Sunday.

I contacted K4BAI/M on 15m just before they left Marion, and I stood by for
about 30 seconds until they called me in Alachua.  We made the QSO.  I listened
to K4BAI call CQ for about a minute without answers, and then they disappeared. 
Mike was listening on 20m and by total coincidence, heard them just firing up on
14029, and nailed them there.  About 30 seconds later, a huge pileup ensued! 
Now that was great timing!

Almost no one asked us to QSY, so whenever we found a fixed station that was a
dupe on that band-mode but unworked on another band-mode, we usually asked for a
QSY.  A huge majority of the stations agreed and the QSY resulted in successful
QSOs.  Stations were continually shocked that 10m was open.  We had a hard time
asking the mobiles to QSY because they often couldn't hear our question, and
they also had such large pileups on 20m CW that we couldn't justify breaking
their runs.  Curt W6RQ worked SSB on Saturday and had some success CQing on
10/15m SSB, increasing our SSB mult count.

Taylor was the last county we needed for the sweep, first given to us by NF4A,
then later by K4KG and W5WMU.

Thanks for all the QSOs and QSYs!  There were an incredible number of mobiles...
great job to all of them!

We hope to see all of you this year in the California QSO Party on October
2-3!
http://www.cqp.org

OJ...
-Dean - N6DE