[OhQP-mail] W8WTS/GEAU

[James M. Galm, W8WTS]

W8WTS from GEAU was essentially a 1B Field Day without the generator.  There
was no station when I arrived and no station when I departed.  I launched
three antennas (high and clear dipoles on 80, 40 and 20) Friday after work.
The station was set up for SO2R with radio #1 on 80 and radio #2 elsewhere.


A home emergency kept me at home Saturday morning too late to make it to
GEAU before the start of the contest.  I wasn't on the air until 1720Z.  The
80m radio promptly failed, which required a frenzied reconfiguration to
SO1R.  My first QSO didn't happen until 1735Z and I was still goofing with
the gear while operating.  

Once on the air from GEAU, I was delighted to find the bands very
cooperative.  20m was not productive for rate, but I did pick up a couple of
far west mults (KL7, etc.)  40m and 80m were both quiet and strong.  The
background noise was very low, which made signals "pop" out and easy to
copy.  40m had limited propagation to Ohio throughout the contest, so it
became the band for 4s, 5s, 0s and 6s.  I worked a relatively small number
of Ohio stations on 40m, but had some nice rates working the 2s, 4s, 9s, 0s
and all points east and west.  80m was the place to be for the Ohio mults.
The band sounded great throughout the contest.  The mobile stations were
easy to copy on either CW or SSB.  Conditions were wonderful for this time
of year.  

My late start meant that I was probably not in line for a new world record,
so I operated at a steady but not head-banging pace.  I had one bad hour in
the 0000-0100Z time frame when I simply went face down sleeping on the
keyboard from operator exhaustion.  Old age sucks, avoid it if possible.  

Here's the tale of the tape.  Final score = 143,640.  

CW+PH/Mul by hour and band

 Hour      80m     40m     20m     15m     10m    Total     Cumm    OffTime

D1-1700Z   4/4      -      6/5      -       -     10/9      10/9   
D1-1800Z   2/2    59/30    1/1      -       -     62/33     72/42  
D1-1900Z  33/26    3/1      -       -       -     36/27    108/69  
D1-2000Z   8/3    39/9     7/3      -       -     54/15    162/84  
D1-2100Z  37/11     -      8/1      -       -     45/12    207/96  
D1-2200Z  49/19    7/0      -       -       -     56/19    263/115 
D1-2300Z  32/9    19/2      -       -       -     51/11    314/126 
D2-0000Z  43/9    --+--   --+--   --+--   --+--   43/9     357/135 
D2-0100Z  25/4     7/0      -       -       -     32/4     389/139 
D2-0200Z  69/20    2/0      -       -       -     71/20    460/159 
D2-0300Z  44/7    22/2      -       -       -     66/9     526/168 

Total:   346/114 158/44   22/10    0/0     0/0  

FYI - There was some chat before the contest about finding a logging program
that works for OQP.  WriteLog, http://www.writelog.com, comes with a contest
module for OQP that knows the rules, has the mults and scores the contest
perfectly from start to finish.  Yes, I know that there are plenty of CT and
NA diehards out there, which is perfectly fine.  While WriteLog has a
learning curve and is not inexpensive, I like it because it just plain works
and never makes a fuss.  

After the contest, I played on the air for a few more hours then crashed in
GEAU until about Noon on Sunday.  The WX was excellent, which made putting
away the antennas a pleasure.  This year was far and away my personal best
score in modern-times OQP.  It was a great contest, with super operators,
lots of activity and cooperative bands.  THANK YOU to all of the mobile, out
of state and Ohio stations for making the OQP so much fun.  

73, 

Jim, W8WTS.