NZ1U/m New England QSO Party rover 2024

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Wow! That was a blast!
Thanks to the contest sponsors, K1KI, and the awesome ops that followed us around all weekend.
Special thanks to N1WK for station engineering the NZ1U/m operating position and antennas, keeping the truck fueled, keeping this operator well nourished and driving all over the beautiful New England countryside safely and effectively.
N1WK Operated the Car / W1UJ Operated the Radio
~866 Miles/~1400 Km - 27 Counties - 15.5 Hours - All 6 New England States
F-150 Truck, 2 High-Sierra 'Screwdriver' antennas mounted to the back-rack with band-specific radials wrapped around inside the truck bed.
K3 Rig, N1MM+, Mortty v5 keyer, 2 Large commercial 12v batteries, Lenovo T480 with aftermarket back-lit keyboard hook-and-loop'd to a lap desk with an old home-brew paddle secured to the desk. Pumped audio into the truck stereo for the whole ride- No headset.
We had 1 failure of a coax cable's PL-259 that took us offline for ~30 minutes Sunday. The failure was evident (in hindsight...) on Saturday but couldn't pin it down until an all-out failure on Sunday AM delaying our start. (RF Noise in the truck speakers during TX and occasional High SWR).
The other unfortunate thing is the noise generated by the truck.. During our trip, the Truck's 'Check Engine' light would pop up intermittently and, at one point, during very hard acceleration, the truck just died out but did not shut off. Once N1WK was driving around the following week (Weds), he actually broke down! There is a problem with the truck's fuse within the fuse box with this vintage vehicle. TLDR: The fuse for the fuel pump was melted! The K3 NB and NR took care of a great deal of the noise.
Originally, we had planned on knocking out the 'new' 2024 CT CoGs to maintain our position in operating from every NewE county (Except MA NAN :( ), but when we reached out to K1KI, he suggested that coverage was light in ME- so that was where we were headed. After squashing the original plans, and planning on ME, K1KI again updated us that the furthest East counties were covered- this afforded us the ability to cover a couple of the Northern VT/NH counties that were lightly covered.
I will proclaim this - SELF SPOTTING WAS KEY to this team's success, fun, and enjoyment this year. In the past, no-one would ever hear us, we would park within a county and call and call and call- make a minimum of 2 QSOs and bail..... or get squashed out by a QRO Fixed station (Only happened once this trip) and hope for the best. On Saturday IN/7QP/ARI would be squashing us out all over the place. The self-spotting established the frequency, provided the instant gratification, refreshing of a run for the long county occupations, and provided the much needed QSOs for the hunters. We would typically only self-spot once per county or band change and it was enough. We stayed high in the band. A coordinated QSO Party mobile window could be amazing!
On Saturday we headed up the coastal counties of Maine, and while we had a good lunch before leaving it was around 2300z/1900EST when we started getting hungry... there is NOTHING open at 1900 EST in Northern Maine apparently... by the time we did find a place, (Anglers Restaurant, Searsport ME *****) it was ~1950 and the restaurant closes at 2000 EST - they stayed around and re-fueled us with a fine seafood combination platter! The one battery we were using kind of fizzled out early but towards the end of the day as expected, so instead of running the 100w and 4-second delay between CQ repeats, we adjusted on Sunday to 50w and 8 second delay for CQ repeats and did not have a problem with the longer operating time. Some of the roads were bone-rattling! I would wedge myself in the passenger seat with my elbows and try not to hit more than one key while working/logging QSOs- It is hard to say who won the 'worst roads' this year. MOST of the roads were just fine. Our overnight stay was at Gateway Inn, Medway, ME - it was very good. We stopped operating around 0230z.
On Sunday, we woke early and hit the road to enjoy a wonderful breakfast at Grandbelly's Cafe in Medway, ME, then about 15 minutes before the contest we were wringing things out and we found the bad coax which led to a ~15 minute delay after the start before the first QSO, but the N1WK temp coax repair helped recover nicely. The scenery was slightly less enjoyable since we were battling torrential rains and winds while coming through the White Mountains of New Hampshire. DL3DXX (Most QSOs! Thank you!!) Pushed me to 15m But no-one answered other than DL3DXX! We CQ'd for a few minutes, but went back to 20m. We had made pretty good time covering North ME, NH and VT so we decided to traverse MA and hit at least one county in CTNOE and RIPRO before finishing the QSO Party in the W1UJ, MAWOR, Driveway. (No Noise with the truck off!)
Thanks again from the NZ1U Barnstormers.