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Re: [CQ-Contest] Fwd: Important Update for the 2020 Georgia QSO Party

To: Jim <jimk8mr@aol.com>, James Cain <jamesdavidcain@gmail.com>, "cq-contest@contesting.com" <cq-contest@contesting.com>
Subject: Re: [CQ-Contest] Fwd: Important Update for the 2020 Georgia QSO Party
From: Jeff Clarke <ku8e@ku8e.com>
Date: Thu, 2 Apr 2020 15:45:46 -0400
List-post: <mailto:cq-contest@contesting.com>
Jim(s),

Thanks for your suggestions.  We are discussing within the SECC the subject of holding a one day QSO party for this year. From the feedback I'm getting the consensus right now is that for this year we probably hold a one day QSO Party on Saturday April 11th from noon-midnight. I will make an announcement before this weekend if we choose this route.

BTW the reason we have a two day QSO Party in Georgia (pre-COVID-19) is our state has 159 counties which is 2nd to only Texas. Many of the counties are small and we have a regular contingent of rover stations who activate many counties every year. Some out of state participants have come close to working all the counties because of our rover activity. I seem to remember one year that W0BH came to operate the GQP with N4PN. Bob and Paul activated 80 counties by themselves during the weekend! The success of both the GQP and FQP can be attributed to the large number of rover stations that are active year after year. In a normal year I don't believe all the counties could be activated in just one day. This year we had two people who planned to come from outside of Georgia to activate a large number of counties as a rover and I told them not to come because of the restrictions that have been placed on travel within Georgia. Having no rover stations is going to greatly change the complexion of our QSO party this year.

Stay tuned for further announcements.

Jeff KU8E  GQP Director


On 4/2/2020 03:14 PM, Jim wrote:
In these days of fast changing orders and policies, a 9 day notice for GQP 
changes would quite reasonable.  Those who had serious plans - mainly the 
mobiles - have already figured things out and changed those plans.

This year will be a good test of my belief that state QSO parties longer than one day make no 
sense. Nobody is going to sit at home in Ohio for two days trying to find every possible 
Georgia station, especially when there are no “new” mobile QSOs to be made. And 
perhaps more important, nobody sitting at home in GA or FL is going to want to spend a second 
day trying to scrape up random new guys who happen to be passing by.

(In normal times Florida with a full complement of mobiles provides enough action to 
keep out of state CW ops interested, but I’d still think the second day as a FL 
fixed station would be quite boring.)

I’d suggest that a 12 hour test  for GAQP - noon to midnight EDT - would be 
quite sufficient.  And not our decision, but I agree that adding 80 meters to FQP for 
this year would make sense.



73  -  Jim





On Apr 2, 2020, at 1:49 PM, James Cain <jamesdavidcain@gmail.com> wrote:

Jeff: There IS time. It's the internet age, after all. I am pretty
sure the ARRL news editor would be glad to have a news item that he
could put on their web page headlined:

Georgia QSO Party Fights Virus with Timely Rules Changes

A lot of clubs and groups pick up those ARRL news stories and pass them along.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained, OM.

Jim K1TN/Florida


Jim,


I would consider that for GQP but I don't know that I have time to get the
word out in time since it's only 9 days away.

I know it's been discussed before and rejected but allowing 80 meters in the
FQP for just this year might be a good idea. Maybe even allow 160 meters as
well. I'm afraid that activity is going to be way down without having
mobiles to chase around. I just updated my GQP activity map on the web page
yesterday and we went from over 2/3 of the GA counties covered to less than
1/3 because I removed the planned mobile/portable operations.  Ouch that
hurts ! Plus it didn't help that GQP falls on Easter weekend this year.

Jeff
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