WQ6X Wings yet another Weird, Kansas QSO Party (KQP)

The Kansas QSO Party is in itself a weird event in that technically it is held on the last full weekend
in August, which is either Weekend #4 or, in the case of 2o26, Weekend #5.  An advantage to running
on weekend #5 is that there are no other events to crowd the frequency spectrum, other than the
various ad-HOC POTA operations.  (Technically there is the U.S. Islands event, however every
year I listen for them and every year, I hear NOTHING.)

Last year, WQ6X ran the KQP GiG as a QRP entry, taking 1st-place for California (W6) and the Left Coast.  This year, the decision was to run 90-watts (LP) from Ramona, with a concerted effort to work multipliers (counties).  To do that, it will take more than QRP power during this considerably lower Solar Flux Index (SFI) to consistently make that happen.

KQP starts on Saturday @ 14:00z (9am CDT) which is 7am on the Left Coast. 
By 7:30, WQ6X was on the prowl for Kansas stations.  Except for a brief 15-meter opening
on Sunday (17:54z), 15 and 10-meters were largely DOA.  Because Cw contacts are worth
3-points (2-points for Ssb), Saturday's focus was largely Cw with a swarth of 20-meter Ssb
contacts on 20-meters midafternoon.  

To run Ssb without stressing my voice, the K3's DVK memories were pre-loaded,
playable by function keys F1 to F4 with the N1mm logging software.   To make
Searching and Pouncing (S&P) easier, F3 invoked a recording saying, 
"Roger, ROGER, ROGER!!".

My one BEEF with KQP is that Saturday operations end @02:00z (7pm PDT). 
Just as 40-meters opens to Kansas, KQP calls it quits for the day.  We NEVER
get a chance at 80-meters to Kansas as we are still in daylight - Bummer Dewd!

Saturday evening, tooling around the KQP website, county maps were found, one in
color and one in Black/White.  This prompted me to create a separate picture for Saturday
and Sunday. When a new country was worked, using the Windoze Paint program, I issued
a color fill to each county, offering a visual look at what areas we worked and still need.

For Sunday, I came up with the idea to open the county map in the Windoze paint program.
Every new county worked was flood-filled with pink to give a visual of the counties worked.
After the contest, I went thru Saturday's log and did the same thing using cyan flood-fill.

What really made the difference in county hunting was to look at the maps submitted by each rover station.  If I had thought to do that on Saturday, I might well have added another dozen+ counties to the log.  Well, as they say - "next year.....".

When it was all over, it would seem that WQ6X took 13th place overall and 1st-place
for W6 (California) and the entire left coast.  34 new counties made it into the log on Saturday,
while 43 new counties made it into the log on Sunday.

DiD YOU work the KSQP State QSO Party?

HoW Many Counties made it to YOUR LoG?

XYZZY