Contents
Background
In recent years, the popularity of small state QSO party contests has grown.
These contests focus on a particular state or combination of smaller states.
They range in length from about 7 to 20 hours. Multipliers are the counties
of the state. Generally, out-of-state state stations are restricted to
contacting stations within the state of interest. Many counties within a
state may have few or even no active stations during the course of the event.
Furthermore, there is rarely enough activity from fixed stations to keep the
contest interesting over the entire duration. Enter the mobile station...
In order to activate rare counties and provide fresh contacts throughout the
contest period, mobile stations will travel through a handfull of counties.
Every time a mobile station enters a new county, they can be contacted again
for both contact and possible multiplier credit. Of course, this makes
mobile stations extremely popular.
What to Expect
Because they operate using 100W to short (8-foot) antennas, mobiles tend to
find that they make more QSOs on CW. In many QSO parties, there is no
incentive (multipliers) for mobiles to make SSB contacts. It's not uncommon
for a mobile to average a rate above 60 contacts/hour for the entire contest
period. Like I always say, it's the next best thing to being DX...and this
is with low power to a tiny, inefficient antenna! Speaking of DX, there are
several DX stations which frequent U.S. state QSO parties. It's always a
thrill to get called by them in the middle of a run of stateside stations.
Sometimes, they even "break" the pileup.
AD8P/M in Putnam County, Ohio. 2004 Ohio QSO Party.
My Mobile Setup
I drive a 1999 Ford Escort sedan. It is refreshingly electrically quiet. I
use two tri-magnet mounts: one in the center of the roof, and the other in
the center of the trunk. The one on the trunk is secured with a luggage
strap. For antennas, I use WD4BUM Lakeview Hamsticks on 20/40/80 meters.
My radio is a Yaesu FT-840, wired directly to the battery. I took *no*
special grounding precautions. The antennas are switched through an MFJ 949
tuner under the passenger seat. This allows the 40 meter antenna to be
rematched on phone at the flick of a switch. On 80 meters, I use the 75 meter
Hamstick with a pair of hat-loading wires as described by K8MR on CQ-Contest and his NCJ article Road Warriors.
For contest logging, I use a Toshiba Tecra 730CDT notebook running
FreeDOS and
TRLog. It is powered directly from
the cigarette lighter. The computer is interfaced to do all CW sending.
For details on my logging setup, see Resources.
It is important to minimize the opportunity for parts of your station to
become projectiles in the event of an accident. The FT-840 is mounted low
along the center console near the gear shift. It takes up some space in the
passenger seat. But, that's not usually a big deal.
The diagram shows the installation pretty completely. The FT-840 is angled
at about 40 degrees from the floor so it's easy to see. The power cable is
fed through a gromet in the firewall on the passenger side of the console.
Mobile Strategy
I don't have all the answers. But, these are some considerations that
have worked well for me. Like they say, your mileage may vary.
For contests where multipliers do not count separately on each mode, there is
almost no incentive to go to phone. CW will almost always yield a better
rate in this situation. And, rate is what you want. In the case of contests
where multipliers are separate by mode, it is a good idea to spend at least a
little time on phone sprinkled throughout the contest to get the biggest
palette of multipliers given band conditions. Phone rates will be high in
spurts but are generally not as reliable as CW rates. Remember this: The
stations calling you are much more likely to need you for multiplier credit
than you need them for multiplier credit. If you're not CQing you're losing.
(If you find yourself working a lot of close-in fixed stations on a band, it
would behoove you to S&P for a minute or two to find other mobiles in the
area.)
Perhaps even more important than the actual operating strategy is the route
strategy. A mobile dare not spend more time than absolutely necessary in a
county. But, not being there long enough might not generate enough interest.
In almost every case, I find that somewhere between 30-40 minutes is optimum.
This is what the winners in almost every state QSO party seem to shoot for.
There are a couple of other considerations that bear some thought:
- Flexibility: You want precise control over the time you spend in as many
of your counties as possible.
- The High Ground: Having the high ground when possible is great. It's
also handy to be able to work large in-state population centers on groundwave.
- Noise Sources: Stay away from cities, industrial areas, and power lines.
- Road Condx and Traffic: US national routes are excellent choices.
Good luck and safe travels.
Resources
One of the most important parts of mobile contest logging is the ability to
reconfigure the software for a new county. This includes new CW memories,
new serial numbers, and just keeping a separate log file. I have system using
a new subdirectory for each county that contains new configuration files, etc.
For the time being, I am just going to list the files here. Soon, a README
will appear with further information on exactly how to tailor the files to
your particular needs.
- cbrtools - For merging and scoring Cabrillo logs. Includes DOS/Windows executables, source code, and basic
instructions on compiling on any platform with gcc.
- newcty - A batch file that automates
the addition of new counties to a route. Set's up all TRLog files and
directories, including shortcut batch files to start TRLog in any county.
Here's an interesting analysis I performed on the highest-scoring mobiles
in several popular QSO parties:
mobile-analysis.pdf
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