Fred Stevens – WA5LIE
Ron Stevens – N5NK
Sometime in early June of 2025 I stumbled across amateur radio county hunting again, then did a dive
down that rabbit hole and noticed that some counties in western Texas were prized (or rarely worked),
like Loving county with only about 80+ permanent residents. Then the idea formed to go out there and
give contacts. Sounds simple, right? Ignorance is bliss.
I personally have not had an HF station for years but have managed to keep up my CW skills. My poor
hearing limits my operations to CW because I can no longer understand most SSB signals. As I worked
the county hunters forums, I learned that most were looking for CW contacts, so that was a plus.
Around Field Day I spoke with Gerald – WB5NZV about the possibility of involving DCARA in some
way and he graciously offered the use of a radio for the project, an FT-991 after Field Day was over. He
also offered a mobile antenna but I declined, figuring I could whip (no pun intended) one together in
my shop.
So far, so good but then the fun started. The antenna project fought me every step of the way and made
a rather simple job an almost nightmare but I prevailed. Construction details are available in a separate
article but the summary is it ended up being 15’ from the road to the tip with a 4”x12” bug catcher coil
at the 6’ point. It required a 2’ extension to a hitch mount so the hatchback would clear the coil when
opened. It is not a trivial antenna. Band tuning was by shorting the coil to various taps, all located with
the help of my VNA. It tuned 80m through 15m and 20m was flat (below 2:1) from around 13MHz to
around 15MHz. Performance was great; if we heard someone, they heard us.
Fast forward to 18 Sept, the big day. Up early and away I go but first, did I mention that the itinerary
had morphed? No longer a jaunt to Loving county and a few points that direction. Oh, no, nothing that
simple. Sandy – WB5YPP who usually rides sidecar wasn’t available for the trip so I asked my brother
Ron – N5NK if he wanted to go and he jumped on it. Ron is also a CW op. He also had a laptop and
the software for logging, CAT control and keyboard ops.
Ok, so away I went and got to his place between Brownwood and Goldthwaite about 10am and more
fun started as we tried to interface the laptop and the 991. I finally took a nap and then came back about
the time he was blasting the laptop back to the stone age with a factory reset (I never found out where it
came from but it was new to him). Once that was done and the software and drivers were reloaded,
everything started working like it should have. As we were loading up everything, I convinced him to
add his Bencher paddles to the pile just in case. It turned out to be a trip saving move.
We didn’t get away from there until late afternoon on the 18th. I drove, Ron operated. We had figured 2
days head start on the Texas QSO Party would allow us to hand out contacts before the bedlam on
Saturday and Sunday but we hadn’t figured on the possibility that no one would be on the air. We
worried that the antenna might be an issue but he would spin the dial, find a station and work it with
good reports, so that wasn’t the problem. We spotted our ops on the county hunters site but no one
showed up on those frequencies. By the time we got to Junction, TX we had maybe 4 county hunter
contacts.
The trip was a great learning experience. While Ron was in the back running the radio (did I mention
the FT-991 is NOT a mobile rig even if it runs on 12V), Murphy was riding shotgun. Why was Ron in
the back? The laptop suffered from RFI and would hose up; a couple of times it locked the transmitter
on until fast hands could get it to stop. RFI into the USB cables, RFI into the audio patch from radio to
car audio (which lit up icons on my dash I had never seen before). Fortunately all the car effects cleared
after unplugging the audio cable and restarting the car.
So, no laptop, no CAT control, no logging, no keyoard CW, just his set of Bencher paddles and my bug
(which is useless in a mobile) and his paddles were intermittent. I suspected the ¼” to 3.5mm adapter
plug he was using so we bought another in Junction, TX. It seemed to work until it didn’t. Somewhere
out there I took the cord off my bug which had the 3.5mm plug and wired it to his paddles and no more
problems during the trip. Later I found that his old ¼” phono plug’s shape was such that the ring
connector, the one between the tip and ground, was too far inset for the adapters to make consistent
contact. It just didn’t meet current chinesium specs.
Junction, TX to Alpine, TX was the Friday leg and we had a bit more success but not much more. One
Californian had emailed me begging for Terrell county, which we really tried to accommodate. We
dragged our feet in Sanderson but, not having the guy’s cell, we couldn’t coordinate with him directly.
By now we were getting a bit frustrated as there were just not many county hunters on the air. We were
making other contacts and when I had cell service I would log into a web SDR and hear our signal, so I
know we were getting out.
Saturday 9/20 the TQP started at 9am but we didn’t leave Alpine until about 10. What a difference! The
bands were full of ops. I guess they had all been at work trying to make enough to pay off their radios.
Whatever, Ron was wearing out his fist as we went from Alpine to Marfa to Ft. Davis, then up to
Pecos. From there to Mentone in Loving county. We stopped there for snacks and found an empty
parking lot and stayed there for over 2 hours while Ron worked the massive pileup that happened when
they heard “Lovi”, the county hunters abbreviation. After we pulled out of Mentone we went east into
Winkler county and Ector (Odessa). Over dinner we decided that it was about 3 hours from there to his
home, so we drove straight through and got there about 2am on Sunday and decided the contest was
over for us.
What did we learn and what would we do different if there is ever a next time?
First of all, RFI harden everything. Cheap chinesium laptops with plastic cases can be hardened but it
isn’t easy. Any cable, ditto. Use the correct plugs without having to use adapters. Test it first, then test
again. We couldn’t test at all because we are 150 miles or more apart, so it was a case of black box
engineering without all the required specs. Learning while going down the road is not fun.
We got to see a lot of country; it was around 1300 miles for me round trip and we ultimately made a lot
of contacts but not until the TQP started. We did work a Croatian station in all that, so again, the rig and
antenna were the only things that worked flawlessly during the DX-pedition. Since I do not have a
mobile HF rig, I may be willing to part with the antenna if someone wants it bad enough. Would we do
it again? Not the same way, for sure. Maybe more targeted destinations instead of the huge loop we did.
Plus, I would get commitments from county hunters to actually be on the air so I wouldn’t feel like the
trip was wasted effort. Next year’s trip, if there is one, will be radically different.
I’ll close with a shoutout to the DCARA for their gracious loan of that 991 which made the trip
possible. Thanks, all.