by Hank Greeb, N8XX
I noted that PREBle county hadn't been reported in the submitted logs for any fixed station during the 2001 OQP. I was searching for a semi "rare DX" location for the 2002 party, but wanted something close to Cincinnati. PREBle county is only 37 miles from my location, so it seemed logical.
Jay, K4ZLE, joined the effort. A couple weeks before the event I went up to Camden, a village about 6 miles inside the county, and scouted possible sites. Neither of the two parks had electricity, so I chose a state highway stop next to US-127. It had a couple 40 to 50'ish foot trees, and a shorter tree strategically located so we could string G5RV antenna at right angles to each other, and separated by a reasonable distance. We solved the electricity problem by renting a 3 KW generator.
Neither of us is much of a voice operator, but I volunteered to run SSB. However my TR-7 hadn't been used for phone in several years, so when I fired it up we got reports of 60 Hz buzz. Quickly we brought Jay's Alinco into the picture, and it worked like a charm. Jay used his ICOM 706 for CW.
Conditions were marginal with 100 watts to 30 to 40ft high antennae, and short skip was very erratic on 40 during the day. 20 worked fine on CW, but poorly on Phone - perhaps because the phone op (n8xx) wasn't much of a phone op. 40 was the best band for both SSB and CW, 20 being second for CW and 80 second for SSB.
Two most interesting things happened. About 4 or 5 p.m. we were hit by an afternoon "pop up" shower, which was a "frog strangler" for about 10 to 15 minutes. We managed to move the rigs under cover, but the keyboard for my computer got wet, and for about an hour the "n" key put out a string of znxv/ plus a control character. A fan pointed at the keyboard cured this within an hour or so, but I became adept at editing whenever a call with an "n" showed up.
The other interesting event happened about 6 or 7 p.m. Two Camden police officers drove up, asked about what we were doing, and said they had had reports that clandestine communcations by agents of Osama bin Laden had been spotted at the roadside park. They recognized ham radio, and we showed them Red Cross and Navy ID plus driver's licenses and they went away satisfied.
Conditions were rotten enough that we quit sometime after 8 p.m., folded up our antenna, packed up our gear, and went home.
Score was a paltry 160 CW, 100 Phone Q's, 59 CW, 49 Phone Multipliers, for a total of 45,360 points. A few photos are at
http://w3.one.net/~hgreeb/oqppreb/
For what it's worth, we're investigating a high spot in BROWn county for next year's effort. Alternatively, VINTon county seems a rare find - and I had a great time there in 1976 or so during a previous incarnation of the OQP.
Kudos to the MRRC gang for putting on a fine QSO party!
73 de n8xx Hg
