Last night was the inaugural 40 Meter Hunt of the 2023 - 2024 Winter QRP Foxhunt Season. I have not actively participated in the Hunts for about 3 or 4 years. I was wondering how it was going to go considering the length of time that I've been away from them. To my satisfaction, it went pretty well, and I was able to shake off the rust rather easily.
The two Foxes were Ed N9EP in Illinois and Wayne N4FP in Florida. I located Wayne pretty much right off the bat at the 0200 UTC starting time, but he was on the weak side, even for a QRP signal. I listened to him work a bunch of W4 stations that were in his "neighborhood" and he was giving them all 599 reports. Knowing that my signal from NJ would not be 599, I decided to make note of his frequency and let him work his close ones while I went to try and locate Ed N9EP.
Ed was the "Upper Fox" between 7.040 and 7.050 MHz and was relatively easy to find as he had (at times) a 579 signal into NJ - but there was also QSB at times. Both Foxes were working split. Ed was listening about 1.5 KHz above his transmit frequency and pretty much stayed there. I managed to work Ed rather quickly at 0210 UTC according to his after action report. Then it was off to try and work Wayne N4FP.
I was thrilled to have worked one Fox my first time back in a long while. Working Wayne would just be icing on the cake. However, working Wayne was a tad more difficult for two reasons. First, his signal was not as strong as Ed's. Secondly, he was the "Lower Fox" situating himself between 7.030 and 7.040 MHz. The problem there was that down around 7.028 MHz or so, there was a station on the air in Botswana. The pileup extended into "Lower Fox" territory and at times made hearing Wayne a bit difficult. To borrow and modify a quote from Superman - "This is a job for the roofing filters!" And so it was. I usually like to run with the filters wide open and use my gray matter as the filter if at all possible. Last night I needed the help and they did not disappoint.
The other thing which added to the difficulty factor in working Wayne was that he was also listening up, but not in one place. Using the KX3's Dual Listening feature, I was not only able to figure out where he was listening, but also roughly how much he was moving around after each QSO. A pattern slowly manifested itself into my brain and I was soon able to place myself where I thought Wayne would be listening next. Persistence paid off and I was able to log a QSO at about 0238 UTC, I think it was - I don't have N3FJP's AC Log in front of me.
With both Foxes in the bag, I should have pulled the big switch and gone off to bed, but I wanted to listen for a while. (I'm paying for that this morning, as I only got about 5 hours of sleep last night, but the coffee is hot and helping.) I took the headphones off, put N9EP's frequency into VFO A and N4FP's frequency into VFO B. I turned on that little "golf ball" speaker that I recently got from eBay and sat listening for a while. I was pleased as that little guy produced enough volume without me having to strain my ears. That's going to be a big help for spectators at our next Field Day.
By about 0248 UTC, Ed's pileup disappeared and he was repeatedly calling "CQ FOX". Wayne on the other hand still had a small pileup, I believe. However, while Ed's signal strength was increasing, Wayne's was on the wane. (Nice choice of words there, LJ!) I'm lucky that I worked Wayne when I did, as in a few more minutes of listening he was getting to the point where had I still been trying, I doubt I would have heard him come back to me.
One thing that was familiar to me and nice to hear once again, was Todd N9NE's signal from Wisconsin. Just like the old times, his RF was capable of blowing the headphones off my head. I felt badly for him because he was trying his darndest to work Ed N9EP, but I guess Illinois and Wisconsin were too close for 40 Meters last night. Ed would call "CQ FOX" and Todd would immediately come back to him, only to have Ed call "CQ FOX" again, right on top of him. Even though I could hear both of them like gangbusters, it was apparent that Ed could not hear Todd. My sympathies went out to Todd as I've been the victim of that situation more times than I can count.
I was kind of surprised that last night, my go to antenna was the HF9V Butternut vertical. I heard both Wayne and Ed better on the HF9V than the W3EDP which was about one S unit noisier. The W3EDP has been my "go to" lately for working POTA stations - it was nice to give the HF9V some use. In all, it was a fun evening and I'm going to try and participate a lot this season, but I can see where my coffee intake the following mornings may increase as a result.
72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP - When you care to send the very least!
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