County Hunter News February 2020 Volume 16 Issue 2 Welcome to the On-Line County Hunter News, a monthly publication for those interested in ham radio county hunting, with an orientation toward CW operation. We also cover some park chasing activities these days. Contributions of articles, stories, letters, and pictures to the editor are welcomed, and may be included in future issues at the editor’s discretion. The County Hunter News will provide you with interesting, thought provoking articles, articles of county hunting history, or about county hunters or events, ham radio or electronics history, general ham radio interest, and provide news of upcoming operating events. We hope you will enjoy the County Hunter News. Feel free to forward, or provide links. Permission is given for copying or quoting in part or all provided credit is given to the CHNews and to the author of article. CW County Hunter Nets run on 14.0565, 10.124.5, and 7056.5, with activity occasionally on 3556.5 KHz. Also, there is SSB activity now is on ‘friendly net’ 7188 KHz. The CW folks are now pioneering 17M operation on 18.0915. (21.0565, 24.9155, and 28.0565 when sunspots better). Look around 18136 or for occasional 17M SSB runs usually after the run on 20M SSB . (21.336 and 28.336) You can see live spots of county hunter activity at ch.W6RK.com For information on county hunting, check out the following resources: The USACA award is sponsored by CQ Magazine. Rules and information are here: http://countyhunter.com/cq.htm For general information FAQ on County Hunting, check out: http://countyhunter.com/whatis.htm MARAC sponsors an award program for many other county hunting awards. You can 1 find information on these awards and the rules at: http://marac.org/awards.pdf There is a lot more information at www.countyhunter.com . Please check it out. Back issues of the County Hunter News are available at www.CHNewsonline.com De N4CD, Bob Voss, Editor (email: [email protected] ) Notes from the Editor N4CD Rumblings 1 ) Sunspots – there we go again – another couple weeks of NO sunspots. At the end of the year/beginning of January, we had some new cycle 25 sunspots appear – sunspot number up to 13 (one group, 3 spots). They didn't last long, and now we're back to a string of spotless days toward the end of the month. Then one group – 4 spots appeared for a sunspot number of 14 – which didn't stick around long! 2 ) QSO Parties! We are into QSO Party season again with VT, MN, NC and SC coming up in February. 3 ) CQ Magazine – I subscribe to CQ Magazine mainly because it sponsors the USA- CA award. They finally 'caught up' to getting issues out in a timely fashion, but now they seem to be slipping again. My 'December 2019' issue arrived on January 21. Should have been November 21 or earlier. It doesn't do much for contest and event calendars that are obsolete when you get them. 4 ) Winter Season Winter is definitely here – with major snow storms across the midwest and east coast reigning in mobile activity quite a bit from summer months. Heck, many of the northern parks are 'closed for the season' or have limited activities – including 2 snowmobiling and snow-shoeing and cross country skiing for the day – but dozens of parks get activated each month – and they're in counties! However, soon we'll have some interesting state QSO Parties in Feb – beginning of QSO Party season with real good ones coming up. Those folks in MN will be out on the icy/snowy roads going hundreds of miles! Many days there have been just one mobile out. Weekends have seen more park activity. We have another couple months of winter up north, maybe 2 months down south before 'spring' arrives. The leaves have finally fallen off the big oak tree out front – all 50,000 of them it seems. Next up is stringy yellow pollen season here. I'll be out mobiling around the area on some trips – but nothing major till the MI Mini is planned. Have you made plans for that? I am headed to Houston for the Vintage Radio Convention/Auction there in early February. The plans are being worked up for the big trip to the MI Mini. I've made plans for Dayton Hamvention. How about you? It's a shame we don't have a county hunter forum but no one volunteered to pick it up so it died a few years ago. Dennis is once again collecting CW Stats at year end 2019. Send him your end year stats soon. He'll compile them by the end of Feb, say Feb 25, and you'll see them hopefully in March. Don't delay – get them in pronto. [email protected] On the Road with N4CD I There was a day before the bad weather was moving in – and it would be up near 70 for the trip and probably no rain. I headed out at 6:45 am – before the sun was up on a foggy morning with plans to head to Oklahoma to some new parks only in the World Wide Flora and Fauna (WWFF) system. While Parks on the Air (POTA) has well over 6,000 entities, WWFF is still under 5,000 and can only add 250 new entities per country each year. The trusty 2016 Malibu Limited had 111,306 miles on it. POTA added many more but now is in a 'hold pattern' waiting till at least half the existing parks in the system are 'activated' (ie, someone has gone there and and made at least 10 QSOs) before adding more. But they just added another 500 in January now.. 3 These would be 3 new parks just added to WWFF. First up would be Love WMA in Love County OK - KFF-4815. You head north on I-35 and take the first exit (Exit 1) and it's no more than half a mile to the WMA. Nice – no sweat finding it! The paved road turns into a nice gravel road as you enter and there is a sign. It's a bit more than an hour and a half from home. To qualify for an activation at a WWFF park, you need to make 44 QSOs. I'm hoping for a nice DX opening to EU for the park chasers there – but not too much luck. Only 4 DX stations go in the log and a handful of others on 20M. It's 1408z and should be good but band not cooperating for hearing them. I move to 40M CW and have an OK run – then 30M CW. Folks are working me for the county as much as the park. I try 20M again and put 3 more DX stations in the log. It's new for everyone. One of the problems of an only WWFF park is that you can't spot yourself on the POTA spotting page which most of the park chasers use! This park doesn't have a POTA number (yet) – may never have one, but likely will at some future date. So you can spot on the county hunter page, DX summit, and if you have enough mobile signal and bandwidth, on the KFF-WWFF Facebook page. While WWFF always has a 'start date', the POTA site doesn't so if they add it, contacts from this trip will count. To finish off, I go to 40M SSB and put another 8 in the log ending with 50 QSOs. Just a few to spare! - - - 4 Up next is one 15 miles further north on I-35, then 15 miles west on highway 32. OK....there's the sign on the southeast corner of the WMA off in a fenced in area. Now to find a point where I can actually get in it. Do find a spot and run it successfully. A few more DX stations make it in the log. Wind up with 53 QSOs and that is good since it is still 'Love County'. It helps if the good folks in the state put them all in different counties – Hi Hi! . One spot you can run is by one of the 'quail check-in' station. I guess if you catch quail, you've got to report each one taken. In TX, you've got to leave one wing at the bird check in station in the box – so they can count and verify how many taken by hunters. 5 Quail check in station Now to backtrack 15 miles to the east, then head further east to the next. I'm zipping along and a text message shows up. Sometimes they can take five or ten minutes from the time they are sent to the time they arrived if you are out of your local area. Sometimes hours! Seems Barry, N0KV needs Love OK for a LC and I just left the county and now in Marshall on my way to Johnston County. So turned around and zipped back two miles to get back into Love, and had a quick QSO on 40M for a LC. Barry is working on fifth time. Turn around again after the QSO and head back east. About 20 miles later I arrive at Washita Arm WMU. Hmmmm..this is a bit confusing. The directions off the web take you into the Tishomingo NWR (KFF-0491). What's going on? I double check my map.