[FQP] NO5W/m FQP Report

Tue May 2 13:54:52 PDT 2017

Here's our report from 3830.
Thanks for a great weekend!.

Call: NO5W
Operators: KN5O, NO5W
Station: NO5W/m
Class: Mobile M/S CW LP
QTH: LA
Operating Time (hrs): 20
Location: Florida

Summary:
Band     CWQs
40:      364
20:     1728
15:        0
10:        0
Total:  2092 Mults 60 Total Score  502,080

Club: LA Contest Club

Comments: K3/100, HI-Q 4/80, Dell D610 logging, Sony Vaio Navigation,
both running CQ/X1.8.0.13, and Streets and Trips 2013, Garmin GPS 18PC
and Pharos GPS receivers.After all was said and done, Sunday night
dinner in Spanish Fort was complete,logs and computers put away, and
the drive home in the rain was over, it wasanother awesome FQP mobile
experience. But this one reminded me of when Ithought I would become a
golfer. Out to play a round the front-side scorecardwould be littered
with bogeys, doube-bogeys and worse with nary a par andthoughts would
be present of the sticks going in a garage sale at the
nextopportunity. But the greens fee had been paid so what the heck
we'd try thesecond nine and wouldn't you know somehow there would be a
few pars and maybeeven a birdie. Forget the garage sale, that's all it
would take to bring usback for more of the same the next week.As many
have commented the Saturday front-side was the pits in the 2017
FQPwith propagation poor and the level of participation seeming to be
way down. For usthat resulted in a mid-party Q count of only 771 and
the discouraging prospectof ending up with about 1500 Qs, well below
our Q count from the past severalyears, if we found more of the same
on Sunday. It was downright embarrassing tohave to report our meagre
results to the AD4ES and K4OJ crews gathered at theNX4N pizza feed
Saturday night. Fortunately the crews sitting around the pizzaand the
key lime pie were kind and only flinched a little when we announced
our771. The pizza as well as the key lime pie was excellent and the
hospitality of Chris and Lilli is much appreciated. It's good to know
that, after a longday on the FQP road with minimum lunch, you can find
a good place to have apizza and trade some good FQP tales. In addition
to the pizza and the key limewe got a tour of the very well-appointed
AD4ES mobile van before departing forthe hotel.We were definitely
discouraged when we retired for the night with the prospectof a long
drive on Sunday. But hey, our dues had been paid as we were alreadyout
two nights of lodging and were in the Tampa area needing to get back
tosoutheast Louisiana so we thought we might as well do a little radio
on thedrive home using our planned Sunday route. Sunday started a bit
slow in Sumterbut the rate picked up with each new county and by the
time we reached Escambiaand the Florida-Alabama state line on I-10 we
were having a ball living on theedge of chaos trying to handle the big
pile ups in Escambia, Gadsden, Suwanee,Baker, and others and the way
home found us happy with the additional 1321 Qswe had picked up on
Sunday and thinking about strategies to improve our resultsfor next
year. One thing we will try to improve on next year is our Saturday
route. Our Sundayroute seems to play well but Saturday found us bogged
down in Polk county andafter missing a couple of turns in Lakeland due
to traffic we had burned upenough time in Polk that we had to skip
Lee, our most southern county, bytaking a short cut to I-75 through
Charlotte. I-75 was a welcome sight by thattime as the traffic was
really moving along that stretch from Port Charlotte upto the Sunshine
Skyway Bridge. Even though I couldn't convince the toll boothlady to
give me a senior rate or one for being in the FQP the bridge provided
abeautiful night time view of the bay area. A quick run up to Lutz and
NX4N viaSR60 found us sitting down to the pizza less than ten minutes
after the closingbell.  Here are some stats from our FQP adventure
across 43 counties including somethat show the difference between
Saturday and Sunday. In the following thecounty results are ordered by
decreasing values in the Rate column. In thistable Rate is the initial
ten-minute rate on entry into the county and is aproxy for the size of
the pileup greeting us. The column labeled First is, of course, the
first station in the log in that county. It should be pointedout that
some of our 40+ dupes have not been removed from the following so
theQs will not add up to the values reported above. County       Qs
Rate First    DayEscambia     55 252  K7IA     SundayGadsden      75
222  K5OT     SundaySuwannee     65 216  AA0AW    SundayBaker
47 210  W8WVU    SundayUnion        47 204  AA3B     SundayLeon
 55 204  W8WVU    SundayWalton       60 204  N9CK     SundayMadison
  66 204  W8PI     SundayBay          58 198  AE1T     SundayHamilton
   72 198  W8WVU    SundayLiberty      41 192  K5OT     SundayColumbia
    64 192  K0HC     SundayHolmes       72 192  IZ3NVR   SundayJackson
     72 192  K9UIY    SundayOkaloosa     48 186  KG5EE
SundayManatee      55 174  K1GQ     SaturdayCalhoun      72 174  K7QA
   SundayCharlotte    35 162  AA3B     SaturdayHillsborough 62 156
KU8E     SaturdayWashington   66 156  WI9WI    SundayGilchrist    34
150  N2ZN     SaturdayDeSoto       38 150  WB5JID   SaturdayPinellas
  45 150  KE4CQ    SaturdaySanta Rosa   44 138  AA7V     SundayWakulla
     48 138  W8WVU    SaturdayHardee       39 132  WB5JID
SaturdayHernando     49 132  NS9I     SaturdayFranklin     28 120
WA3HAE   SaturdayDixie        29 120  K3WW     SaturdayPutnam       29
120  W4NZ     SundayPasco        43 120  K8QKY    SaturdayAlachua
24 114  NE9U     SundaySarasota     61 114  AB1J     SaturdayPolk
   72 114  K9CT     SaturdayJefferson   106 114  N9RV
Saturday+SundayLafayette    29 108  NE9U     SaturdayClay         20
102  VA7ST    SundayCitrus       31 102  VA3FV    SaturdayLevy
38  96  W5FOC    SaturdaySumter       18  84  WN4AFP   SundayTaylor
   26  84  K0HC     SaturdayBradford     57  60  K9CT     SundayMarion
      35  54  VA3DF    SundayWith Sunday occupying the top sixteen
slots it is clear that the pileupactivity was more intense on Sunday.
With 40m coming to life on Saturdayevening the pileups in Manatee,
Charlotte, and Hillsborough added a glimmer ofhope for activity
picking up on Sunday. The slow start on Sunday is clear fromthe rates
for Marion, Bradford, and Sumter which were Sunday morning
counties.The highest rate counties Escambia, Gadsden, and Suwannee
were all afternoon. During the FQP we worked 362 unique calls and
appreciate the QSOs from each.But special mention goes to the 43
stations who contributed more than half ofour QSOs: K3WW(47),
N9CK(45), VE3KZ(42), K9CT(40), K9OM(39), K8IR(38),VA3DF(38), NE9U(36),
W2RR(34), WA3HAE(31), K0HC(30), K9CW(29), K3WJV(29),WI9WI(29),
K0RC(28), W8WVU(28), WJ9B(25), K5GA(25), W8PI(24),
K7SV(24),VE3UTT(23), NS9I(23), K0TI(23), VE9AA(23), VE3OM(21),
NW0M(20), W5TM(20),W1QK(20), W9OA(20), N2AN(19), N8II(19), W1FJ(17),
NQ5K(16), W1WEF(16),N7IR(15), W1TO(15), VE3CX(15), VE3BR(14),
K7IA(14), K0VXU(13), N5NA(13),N8BJQ(13), and I4VEQ(13).In past FQPs
multipliers have been our scoring weak spot and 2017 was nodifferent
with only 60 mults being captured. No stations were worked from AK,ND,
NE, SD, or UT. The Canadians were well represented by AB, BC, MB, NB,
ON,PE, and QC with the big VE turnout coming from ON -- thanks for the
greatsupport from VE3. Conditions did not support many DX contacts and
we onlymanaged to work HA, HH, I, JA, KP4, OK, SP, and TG, but there
were some goodsignals in there especially from stations worked in I,
OK, and SP.The pileups were large but for the most part well-behaved,
standing by once itwas clear we were responding to a given station. We
certainly appreciated thatbehavior and I'm sure others in the pile did
also. For some of the largerpileups it became necessary to attempt to
spread the pileup out time-wise byusing different TU messages
sometimes short and sometimes long but always witha goal of
identifying our call and county every 3-4 QSOs. Apologies for any
failures to meet that goal.    It's always fun to have an eye-ball QSO
with another mobile during FQP and thisyear, in addition to the AD4ES
and K4OJ crews at the pizza party, we had anopportunity for a short
QSO with Tom-K4ZGB who walked up while we were pumpinggas in one of
the panhandle counties. We also had a near eyeball QSO and a real40m
one with Wayne and Marty of the N4FP team who pulled up and parked up
thestreet from us as we were leaving our Clay County stop and run
location inKeystone Heights. We had bumped into Wayne and Marty while
pumping gas inMarion County a few FQPs ago.   Finally many thanks to
all those who participated in the 2017 FQP and to thosebehind the
scenes people that check the logs, cheerlead, write the
reports,procure and mail the plaques and all the other things that it
takes to have aQSO party as successful as the FQP has been during its
20 years. Here's to 20more.Hope to be back again next year.73 es
OJChuck-NO5WTed-KN5O