2023 7th Call Area QSO Party

Results

On May 6, Jay, WA0WWW, and I put one county in WA, two counties in ID, and 14 counties in MT on the air.  The quick summary was that it was a tough go.  We started on the WASPO-IDKOO county line at the start of the party.  That 30 minutes netted us a measly five pair of Qs.  Last year we netted 27 Qs in the first 30 minutes.  From the county line we headed west on I90 into MT to St. Regis then up the Clark Fork River valley where the scenery was great, but the radio propagation wasn't.  Not only was the propagation marginal, but the weather was rain nearly all day long.  Enough complaining!

Once we got to the more open mountains of MT around Helena our signals could get out better and the rates improved.  We ended with 413 Qs and 46 mults for a claimed score of 56,994 for 13 hours of operation.  Twenty meters was the band for us with 271 Qs there.  We had high hopes for 15 m, but it coughed up only four Qs.  After 0000Z 40 m came to life and for the day we made 138 Qs there.

For US states we made Qs with 40 missing DE, ID, LA, MA, MS, ND, NM, RI, SD, and VT.  The only DX stations this year were from Italy, Germany, and the Slovak Republic.  Our most constant companion was John, N6MU, in CA who worked us twelve times in eleven counties.  John has led the pack for the last several years both here in 7QP and the Salmon Run.  Next up were K9CW, Drew, in IL and W5TM, Ed, in OK who each had seven Qs with us.  Other notable customers were AH6KO, KO6M, N5TJ, NC6K, and W9ILY.  A total of 243 different calls made it into our log.  This was up from last year's 200 which was about the only metric that was an improvement this year.

One of the benefits of operating mobile is seeing things you don't usually see from day to day.  For the 7QP Jay and I always see antelope in Beaverhead County, MT south of Dillon.  This year's route did not go through there, but we did see antelope in Meagher County, MT.  One other interesting observation was that nearly all of the MT streams and rivers were running bank full or nearly so.  In a few places the water was over the banks and flooding the adjacent bottoms.

The rig was an Elecraft KX2 and an Elecraft KXPA100 to a Scorpion 680 antenna mounted in the center of the bed of my 2002 Ford Ranger.  We used N1MM+ on an HP laptop with full rig control and a MORTTY for CW keying.

Jay and I thank all who contacted us as well as those who tried but didn't make it.

Pictures and comments from along the route.