In 2011, I got together with Ben (NN9S) and Tymme (K9TYM), and we participated in the Indiana QSO Party from Tymme’s house, just outside Bloomington, Indiana. None of us were experienced contest operators, but we managed to set up a multi-multi station in short order and kept it on the air for the duration of the event, giving out QSOs for Monroe County.
We couldn’t pull the team together last year because of jobs and travel schedules, but we entered this year as a Rover team. My 2009 Hyundai Sonata is outfitted with a Kenwood B2000, similar to the TS-2000, but without a front panel. The main radio unit is housed in the trunk, with a remote head mounted on the dash.
Over the last year, I’ve gradually modified the car for this operation, with power connectors running down the left electrical channel to the trunk, and audio, keying, RS-232 and antenna control cables running along the right electrical channel. One of the radio’s antenna ports is dedicated to a 2m/70cm antenna, while the other is used for HF: either a screw driver antenna or MFJ hamsticks.
I took a few days off of work for the event and camped on the way out and back to Indiana from Virginia. Before leaving, I lightened up the car a bit by removing the passenger side seat. The seat is held down by four bolts, easily removable with a socket wrench, plus some electrical cables that had to be disconnected. In place of the seat, I screwed in a RAM Mount for my panasonic toughbook laptop, with power from the car’s accessory power port and rig control via RS-232. This allowed the computer to be operated from either the driver position or the rear seat. Similarly, the microphone reached to the rear seat.
Either passenger in the back could operate the microphone, and the passenger behind the driver typically also fulfilled the role of navigator. The other passenger in the rear seat operated the computer, and the driver either drove, or while parked, operated CW using paddles mounted on the center console behind the shift lever. An autokeyer with rate adjustment was installed into the front dash.
We followed a counter-clockwise loop, starting near Tymme’s house in Monroe county. Our plan was to aim for county borders that were along an efficient route. In the weeks before the event, we roughed out a plan using Google Maps and Street View to try to find places that would be safe to pull over and operate and ideally far from sources of electrical interference. We also tried to find locations with some elevation and good prospects for pitching an antenna into a tree or setting up a support pole.
We got off to a wobbly start because we did not make good time from Chicago to Bloomington, and we got a little turned around in Bloomington. Consequently, when the contest started, we were still on the way to Tymme’s house. This wasn’t a major set back, as we just started operating mobile on voice until we got there. As soon as we pulled it, storm clouds were gathering, and the decision was made to shoot the 80m antenna for the evening’s operations before the sky let loose. While Ben and Tymme disappeared into the woods to shoot strings into trees, I operated CW from Tymme’s driveway.
Before long, we were underway, first way point: the Monroe/Lawrence border. Our circuit continued with operations in Orange, Dubois, Martin, Washington, Scott, and Jackson counties. We had surprisingly few contacts in Martin country, which I thought would be a highly sought location, and I’m not sure why — we had a remote, high location; maybe propagation was just off at that point in the day.
As the first person to operate phone when we got to the Orange/Dubois border, I learned that “Dubois” isn’t pronounced the way I thought I was. In Indiana, it rhymes with “noise” rather than “quoi”.
We continued operating the entire duration of the contest, driving through pouring rain for the last few hours. The rate began to drop off in the evening, a reflection of the poor efficiency of mobile antennas on the lower bands. Looking at the clock and the map, we reckoned that we would need to get back to Monroe country quickly if we wanted to have a chance to use the 80m full-length dipole that we had spent some time setting up earlier in the day. We nicked Brown county on the way back to Tymme’s, but unfortunately didn’t land any QSOs. In retrospect, I think we should have written off getting back and tried to get a couple contacts in Brown country, but we were also constrained by our over all travel plans — we had to be back in Chicago by 6 am the next morning, so we were keen to get back to Tymme’s by midnight and catch a few hours of sleep.
Tymme took the wheel for the last hour or two of the contest, flying through Indiana back roads like Luke Skywalker in the trenches of the version 1.0 deathstar. I’m pretty sure Tymme turned off the targeting computer and just followed his instincts home. Surprisingly (to me), when we got to Tymme’s house, he didn’t stop driving, even though the driveway had run out. Tymme continued to sail over lawn and into the forest behind his house, with the car slicing through waist-high grass. He stopped when he got to the tree supporting the 80m dipole and we hooked up the feed line to the radio in the car’s trunk.
Aside from some boozy yokels on 75m, we didn’t hear much activity, but once we started calling CQ, we had a pile up of responses. When we had wrung out sideband, we switched down to CW and a similar hot run. In the last half hour of the contest, I was pleased to work many calls that I recognized as QRP stations.
During the 12 hour event, we reckon that we worked 30 states/provinces and 48 sections. This is actually fewer states than we had worked in 2011. I believe that this could be improved in future efforts if we used higher antennas and paid more attention to the 7Q contest. Here is the breakdown by band and mode:
Doing some quick calculations after the contest, it appears that Ben has now achieved the first rank of “worked all Indiana” between Operations Sizzling Pork and Rolling Pork.
On the way home, I attached the 10m MFJ hamstick to the trunk mount and worked CW. Conditions were great, with solar flux up around 150. I logged QSOs to the following countries: Honduras, Nicaragua, Argentina, Cuba, Guadeloupe, Brazil, Canary Islands, Mexico, Paraguay, Puerto Rico, the Balearic Islands, and South Africa.
This year, we had some nice mini-pileups, which made it an exciting event. After getting back to Virginia, I called up records from dxsummit to see if and when we were spotted (thanks, by the way, to everyone who did spot us). I would have guessed that we had been spotted at some additional times, so maybe this records isn’t all-inclusive of spots, or perhaps people are just good at finding fresh stations to work:
N9IO 3530.0 NN9S inqp 0347 05 May United States K3CT 7225.0 NN9S QSO Party 0012 05 May United States KB9NW 7244.9 NN9S 2244 04 May United States
I hope we are able to build on our effort in INQP 2014. The first item on the plan for INQP 2014 will be operation from Brown County.