GQP 2012 - Floyd County

The operating position from Floyd County. The ancient
Toshiba logged the Qs, the MacBook monitored
spotting networks.

I managed to put in a pretty good effort for the Georgia QSO Party from the microshack. Managed a total of nearly 14 out of the 20 possible hours operating. 


Much of this was calling CQ. I was pleasantly surprised to find I could keep up a decent rate most of the time. I probably could have scored a bit higher had I not tried so hard to make Qs on every band. 


The station, as you can see is not elaborate. Venerable TS-430S with an AT-250 antenna tuner. Used the R7000 from 40-10m, and the 80/40m dipole for 80 and 40m. The dipole is pretty low -- only 3m high -- so it is a real worm -burner.


The TS-430S does not have the QRM-fighting power of the Elecraft K2. There were a number of times someone moved in close to my running frequency and I had to slide away, because I could hear. 


Running on CW was very effective on both 20 and 40m. Oddly, though, I could never get anything going on 20m phone. 40m was the big-time money band, with over 2/3 of the contacts taking place ont hat band. I started off using the R7000 on 40m, but I found the worm-burner dipole to be much more effective overall. It really needs to go higher. I can't wait to see how well it will work way up in the trees.


Many thanks to the folks who spotted me. I could tell a few times when it happened with a flurry of callers. 


I did have one odd incident on Sunday around 2210z. I had been running near 7042 kHz for nearly a half hour, when suddenly I was blasted with a high-speed, run-together CW that started off OKNOMORE.... and was laced with profanity. I knew I had a problem when I moved up half a kHZ and he followed me a minute later. I switched to phone for 10 minutes then came back to CW in a different part of the band. I hope this lid did not bother anyone else. 


This is my best GQP score ever, with more phone Qs alone than my Phone-only efforts.

Summary:
Band  CW-Dig Qs  Ph Qs
------------------------
 160:      0        0
  80:     53       11
  40:    215      232
  20:    115        4
  15:     16        5
  10:      0        0
   6:      0        0
------------------------
Total:    399      252  
CW-Dig Mults = 44  
Ph Mults = 32  
Total Score = 79,648

Club: South East Contest Club