Arizona ScQRPions

We hope you will join us this Saturday for the annual Freeze Your Buns Off winter QRP outing.  Some of our more balmy climes appear to sitting under a coating of ice this year.  Zonies might even need an umbrella this year.  Conditions should be good for a welcome change from the past few years.  Ten through 20 meters has been especially good and even the lower frequencies as it approaches evening.  Lots of DX early in the morning and shortening up in the late morning hours.  40m might be a good place to start in the earliest hours.  The rules are our same Rules Almost Forever.  Work anything that walks, crawls, or flies and it counts as a Q.  Even SSB is tolerated.  K7DD is the bonus station and worth 100 extra points per band.  He’s worth a lot.

Mike, K7DD, and perhaps Norm, N9AV will be at White Tanks again this year at Site 4.  Join them in person if you can, there is plenty of space with tables and ramadas.  Bring your own trees or something to hold your antennas up.  Verticals work well also, but be sure to throw in a few radials for those.

The auto log has been updated for 2024 and appears to be working.  You can enter your scoring summary online as well as soapbox comments.  There is even a way to enter pictures.  We’d appreciate as always having those to enjoy.  If you would prefer to send pictures or comments by email or links to where you post adventures, you can send those to me at jwstevens+FYBO2024@gmail.com and I will post them up on this website.

Our usual admonition applies again this year.  This is not for an episode of Survivor.  Please be very careful as the colder temperatures can be dangerous.  You’ve made it this far in life, keep it that way as we will need stations to come back for next year.

We hope you will join us this Saturday for the annual Freeze Your Buns Off winter QRP outing.  Some of our more balmy climes appear to sitting under a coating of ice this year.  Zonies might not be in shorts and t-shirts this year.  Conditions should be good for a welcome change from the past few years.  Ten through 20 meters has been especially good the last few months and even the lower frequencies as it approaches evening.  Lots of DX early in the morning and shortening up in the late morning hours.  40m might be a good place to start in the earliest hours.  The rules are our same Rules Almost Forever.  Work anything that walks, crawls, or flies and it counts as a Q.  Even SSB is tolerated.  K7DD is the bonus station and worth 100 extra points per band.  He’s worth a lot.

Mike, K7DD, and Norm, N9AV will be at White Tanks again this year.  Join them in person if you can, there is plenty of space with tables and ramadas.  Mike will have multiple radios with him.  Bring your own trees or something to hold your antennas up.  Verticals work well also, but be sure to throw in a few radials for those.

Our website has been down for a couple weeks due to changes at the internet service provider and a rearrangement of the hosting package.  Their tech support guys finally got things running correctly again last night after a marathon session.  Hours.  I had to fix a few links, but they should be mostly working.  The Contest Calendar display had also changed locations so that is repaired also.

The auto log has been updated for 2023 and appears to be working.  You can enter your scoring summary online as well as soapbox comments.  There is even a way to enter pictures.  We’d appreciate as always having those to enjoy.  If you would prefer to send pictures or comments by email or links to where you post adventures, you can send those to me at jwstevens+FYBO2023@gmail.com and I will post them up on this website.

Our usual admonition applies again this year.  This is not for an episode of Survivor.  Please be very careful as the colder temperatures can be dangerous.  You’ve made it this far in life, keep it that way as we will need stations to come back for next year.

Rules are the usual.  Make whatever contacts you can with whoever you can find on the air.  Bonus station this year is K7DD in Arizona.  If the scoring site is not working correctly, hang on we’re resetting it for the new year.  Hope conditions are great and you make lots of contacts!!  Mike, K7DD, and Charlie, NJ7V, outline their plans below —  First Mike…

Sorry for being so late at getting this out here but there have been some things happening behind the scenes that have taken too much of my attention lately, like working more than I would normally like.  But for this Saturdays FYBO event the call sign for the Bonus station/Club Operation will not be NQ7RP, it will be my call K7DD. We did this one other year but I don’t recall when exactly but it was several years ago.  Reasons for this will become evident in the near future.

Well, the update is late this year as tomorrow is FYBO 2021.  Rules are the usual.  Make whatever contacts you can with whoever you can find on the air.  Bonus stations this year are K7DD in Arizona and K5JS in South Louisiana.  If the scoring site is not working correctly, hang on we’re resetting it for the new year.  Hope conditions are great and you make lots of contacts!!

Freeze Your Buns Off time once again!  All contacts count in these times of substandard propagation!  Sames rules as last year.  Make it work!  The Autolog has been updated for 2020 and appears to be working.  The link to the FYBO2020 entry site is http://www.QRPContest.com and scroll down for FYBO2020.  Previous years results are also available at this link.

Grab up your radio go-bag and set up somewhere in the field for best effects! Yeah.  The field can be your back porch or yard.  This doesn’t have to be an ordeal.  String up some sort of portable ant and use batteries for max points even in the back yard. Avoid the dreaded Home Category where everything is only a multiplier of 1.  Above all, have fun and stay safe if you are going to operate in seriously cold weather.

Mike (K7DD) is headed for the great outdoors again this year.  So, get those batteries on charge, check the gear out and let’s have some fun in the outdoors!

This year NQ7RP and maybe NQ7RP/5 will both be active and it can double your chances of getting the bonus points for your score! 

I’ll be manning the NQ7RP station (probably at White Tanks Park) with my trusty KX3, a DSW40, Maybe a DSW20 or my QCX20 and play with the gear a bit to see how it all compares.

After selling off my Kenwood TS2000 to get my Flex6300, I ended up missing the VHF/UHF capability and found another one but this one is an X model so now I have 1.2Ghz. I may even take it to the park just because. It doesn’t draw much more than the KX3 in RX and does 5W just fine. 

Antennas are still up in the air, (pun intended) but most likely will be a 40 or 80 M end fed or just the PAR triband end fed. If I have the means to make it happen I might use my Tripod and a full size 1/4 wave whip for 20M. 

If anyone would like to join me and get some on the air time, please feel free to come on out!  I usually bring enough food for a small army just in case.

You can Google “White Tanks Recreation Area and Park” and it will give you info about the Park and how to get there. I should be back in AREA 4 just to the right hand side of the restrooms.  Nice ramadas for shade (and yes you sometimes need that in Arizona in the Winter).  ICBMs to this map location:  https://goo.gl/maps/wCTFGGviL122

The last couple of years of FYBO have been tough on several fronts.  Propagation has been a big one followed closely by lack of maintenance.  That has changed forever beginning this year!  We are now a part of Diz’s (W8DIZ) QRP Contest log entry and scoring website. You can now enter your summary online at http://www.QRPContest.com and see your score included with everyone else.  No waiting.  No fuss.  No more suspense and hand-wringing!  It has been checked with submittals from previous years and all were correctly calculated and displayed!  You can enter your soapbox comments right on the form and even include a link to pictures if you want.  The entry site is live and please feel free to head over to take a look and try it out. 

There are a few changes in the rules and where to find the scoring website. Be sure to click on the FYBO tab on this site or on the FYBO section of QRP Contest (http://www.qrpcontest.com) to take a quick look. 

A huge THANKS to Diz and to Mike K7DD for making the effort to get things back on track!  We hope you will find the time to join us on the aire Saturday, February 3, for FYBO 2018!

Gather up the logs, figure your score, do the soapbox with pictures if possible.  Can’t be that many Qs today.  Email them at your earliest convenience to FYBO2017@azscqrpions.org.  See how easy that was?

Thanks for being here today!

72 john K5JS  aka  NQ7RP/5

Well, that does it for me for another year!  2100Z. Have to get ready to drive down to the Big Easy this evening.  Fun, but contacts were hard to come by here in South Louisiana.  Of any kind.  Worked some 1W stations that had great signals!  W0RW and WA8REI both 1 Watters.  Paul NA5N in NM was consistently S7-9 most of the day with the retirement KX-2.  wG0AT had a nice signal on 40M early.  Everyone else was around 14.060.   Signals ranged from S9 to ESP.  Within seconds.  Indoors today with the K3 and 180′ inverted L.

Here’s my pitiful log…  Signals are coming up as I have to leave.  Bleh.  🙁  And K2WW, Dean gets in just under the line.  NY 569.  QSB.  Just one more QSO………

Time once again for FYBO!  There are a few minor changes for this year. So here’s a quick summary.  All your contacts with stations whose primary event is not FYBO will count. Non FYBO stations are invited to submit a band summary of your contacts to be included in the FYBO activity.  SOTA, Parks, whatever.  You don’t have to be QRP.  There is a spot to denote QRO in the summary. See the yellow highlighted  areas in the rules for changes.

Ok. We haven’t been too good about getting things published the last year or so, but one thing for sure is, if you do not submit your score and soapbox we cannot publish it.  So, please send them in or a link to your own site where we can pick it up.

We are looking forward to working you on Saturday, February 4 beginning at 1400Z or 8 AM CST.  The deep south station, NQ7RP/5, will begin on 40M CW.

72 —  John K5JS