When we redesigned the South Carolina QSO Party in 2015, we made many
changes, but there were two that were important to increased activity and
excitement.
1. Allowed in-state stations to work SC counties for multipliers.
2. Gave in-state stations double QSO points for working Out Of State
stations.
The first rule change (in-state county mults) helped us have more activity
during the entire contest. The new "double points" rule gave the more
competitive SC operators an incentive to work the high bands as much as
they possibly could. To "win" in this QP, you had to run on 20m and S&P on
40m & 80m.
Since then we made a couple more changes like allowing county-line contacts
and allowing self-spotting. These changes were geared to attract more
mobiles and it worked. :Last Feb we had 10 mobile ops including some
amazing ops like N4CW, K4QPL and others. We also share a weekend in Feb
with the North Carolina QP. It doesn't get much better than a Carolina
Weekend. Many of the mobiles operated in both Carolinas and there was
always a mobile running on every band.
Regarding the TNQP, I worked it for 6 hours. One unusual scoring feature
that the TNQP offers is that multipliers are per band instead of per mode
like most of the other QPs. If I was a mobile op in this contest, I'd work
as many mults on as many bands as propagation would allow. I worked three
TNQP mobiles... I believe that they were probably down a few from last year.
I'm an East coast low power, wire antennas station and the Western QPs are
always more challenging for me and that's the way it is..LOCATION,
LOCATION, LOCATION...
73s and good QPing
Dave WN4AFP
SCQP Team Leader
On Wed, Sep 6, 2017 at 7:18 PM, Bill Mader <billamader@gmail.com> wrote:
> Good points Jim and Ted. When operating in or promoting a State QSO Party,
> there are many things to consider. I believe foremost is participation,
> from within and external to the home State/Area. Within the State, working
> other counties and other multipliers are as important, sometimes more so,
> than making QSO's. Thus, operating on 80m/75m and 40m can make a huge
> difference in scores.
>
> I worked portable for this past Saturday's Colorado QSO Party at the
> intersection of three "rare" counties. Much to my surprise, there was no
> 80m/75m (that I could copy) at the beginning or end of the event. My
> strategy was to work and stations I could find, move up to 40m, and then
> 20m. I did the opposite at the end of the event.
>
> Using W6SX's advice, thanks Hank, I ran stations all the time excluding my
> pointless forays below 40m and above 20m. I only changed bands/modes when
> runs dried up. I operated both 40m and 20m, alternating between the two.
> Thus, I made my counties available to both "locals" and out-of-State
> stations.
>
> I made 828 QSO's on 40m and 695 on 20m. That led to 52 and 59 mults
> respectively. From that, I conclude working both 40m and 20m was critical
> to my score. Looking at N1MM+'s graph of QSO's/hour by band shows I should
> still have operated 40m more during the middle four hours and probably lost
> some multipliers by staying exclusively on 20m then. Another lesson
> learned!
>
> It's difficult to achieve the "perfect" balance, but it's obvious that
> in-State competitors need to balance local and distant contacts to achieve
> the best possible scores. Additionally, if we don't try to run up
> out-of-state QSO's, those participants, as Jim points out, will become
> fewer
> and fewer. We need guys like John, N6MU, who follows me from band-to-band.
> Thanks John! Too bad we couldn't make contact on 80m.
>
> One more point. It was obvious that the great majority of my COQP QSO's
> were with non-contesters, especially on SSB. Treating them well is a big
> part, IMHO, of every contest. I often used a voice recording "begging" for
> contacts--it worked, even better than my short SSB CQ, one designed to
> attract fellow contesters.
>
> I believe the more contacts we make, the more fun everyone has in these
> (and
> other events). That's why I'm a big fan of mobiles running APRS, allowing
> self-spots for mobiles and portable stations without changing their
> categories to assisted. And not "charging" them for another operator when
> someone else drives and doesn't make contact is both safer and seems fair
> to
> me. However, convincing sponsors to change QSO Party rules if often a
> challenge.
>
> All-in-all, it was a fun event in spite of the previous day's solar event
> and resulting decline in propagation. We only traveled a little over 200
> miles to that alfalfa field. Coincidentally, a deputy sheriff dropped by
> to
> check us out as we finished setup Friday. His call is KD0SAU--small world!
>
> 73, Bill, K8TE
> Faith, Family, Radio-Life is Good!
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Tue, 5 Sep 2017 09:29:49 -0700
> From: Jim Brown <k9yc@audiosystemsgroup.com>
> To: cq-contest <cq-contest@contesting.com>
> Subject: Re: [CQ-Contest] Tennessee QSO Party 2017 - Sunday September
> 3
> Message-ID:
> <b1b61dbe-15ba-d3cb-6870-6bc92133d33c@audiosystemsgroup.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed
>
> Hi Ted,
>
> If this is to be the attitude, I think QSO parties are going to lose a lot
> of support out here. That may not matter to you, but it is a major
> disappointment for those of us who enjoy it.? Here's what an OT posted on
> the NCCC reflector reporting his TNQP score:
>
> > Other than MIQP, I'm about to give up on eastern QSO parties.?
> > In-state turnout is really poor, and they QSY to 40 to run up their
> > own scores with the east coast stations while the sun is still high in
> > the sky out here on the western frontier.? Throw a party and then
> > abandon a bunch of your guests ... seems a bit rude.
>
> This is from a guy who, like me, has been part of at least a dozen
> expeditions to light up rare counties for CQP and 7QP. Out here, these
> expeditions require major efforts equal to or greater than the serious /M
> efforts by teams led by guys like W0BH and K4BAI. We typically drive
> 200 miles or more each way to a a site where we set up antennas good enough
> to put decent signals into the east coast on all the contest bands except
> 160. And these locations must be scouted. N6RNO spent an entire weekend
> finding what turned out to be a great site in Tehama Co.
> W6GJB, W6JTI, and I spent four days making three round trips across NV to
> light up 7 counties in 7QP.? We spent five days doing it in UT. Note that
> the NV border is 6 hours away, and UT is more like 14 hours.? We're
> thinking
> about ID and eastern OR for next year.
>
> 73, Jim K9YC
>
> On 9/4/2017 1:06 PM, Ted Bryant wrote:
> > In the afternoon we always try spend some time on 40 and 20m from
> > each county. But it's a numbers game, Jim. And I know you're aware of
> this.
> > Around 23z, 80m begins to come alive for the mobiles here, especially in
> > Eastern TN. Also around that time the skip on 20m gets very long.
> There
> > are a lot of unanswered CQ's and it just cannot support the activity
> > to compare with 40 or 80m. And in a short contest like this, rate is
> key.
> >
> > Thank you for the many QSO's yesterday, wish it could have been even
> more.
> >
> > 73, Ted W4NZ
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: CQ-Contest [mailto:cq-contest-bounces@contesting.com] On Behalf
> > Of Jim Brown
> > Sent: Sunday, September 03, 2017 7:47 PM
> > To: cq-contest
> > Subject: Re: [CQ-Contest] Tennessee QSO Party 2017 - Sunday September
> > 3
> >
> > It's not much fun when one of the two mobiles abandons 20M hours
> > before the band closes and doesn't show up on 20 in several counties
> > before that. I gave up around 23Z, and won't bother to submit a log.
> >
> > 73, Jim K9YC
> >
> > On 9/1/2017 10:27 AM, Ted Bryant wrote:
> >> With all the contest activity this weekend and being a holiday
> >> weekend as well, don't forget that we're having a party in Tennessee,
> >> the Tennessee QSO Party - on Sunday after things have calmed down a
> bit.
> >> Don't shut your radio off, come join us. Chase the mobiles across
> >> the Tennessee hillsides through our 95 counties. The party is only
> >> 540 minutes (9 hrs) long so it should be fast-paced, non-stop action.
> >> Awards for those who make 100 QSO's or more.
> > _______________________________________________
> > CQ-Contest mailing list
> > CQ-Contest@contesting.com
> > http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/cq-contest
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> CQ-Contest mailing list
> CQ-Contest@contesting.com
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>
--
Dave Edmonds
PK Ministry Webs
864.288.6678
dave@pkministrywebs.com
www.pkministrywebs.com
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