Spring is here!
One of the rights of Spring, or at least April, is the changing of the
county map for the Florida QSO Party.
The 67 Florida counties shown on the home page of the FQP are colored
Green until someone volunteers to activate one of them by contacting our
county coordinator NS4W, at that time the county will change from Green
to Orange. If you are a Floridian be sure to check in (there is a
button on the web page) and register your county (or counties for you
mobile teams).
If you go to the opening page of the Florida QSO Party web page
http://www.qsl.net/fqp
you will see the changing of the counties is underway. We should have a
return of all the rover teams this year and actually some new ones
including an entry by K4FQP/M!
The FQP has something for everyone, Floridians get to call CQ and be
rare and wanted like the rarest DX, county hunters get a chance to
remove any unwanted Florida counties from their want list - for the past
4 years ALL 67 of Florida's counties have been activated and we have had
a lot of clean sweeps, including:
This past year we had our first DX sweep, GM3POI swept the Florida
counties! We had the following sweep in the 2,002 running:
CALL POWER MODE LAST COUNTY TIME SWEEP COMPLETED ON SUNDAY
W1NN LOW MIXED CAH 1544Z (CW Sweep @ 1817Z - OKE)
W8MJ LOW MIXED HEN 1544Z (CW Sweep @ 1817Z - OKE - earliest CW Sweep)
GM3POI HIGH CW GUL 1824Z
W?GXQ LOW CW OKE 1825Z
VE1OP HIGH CW IDR 1931Z
N6MU LOW MIXED TAY 2012Z
K9QVB LOW CW TAY 2032Z
WA3HAE LOW MIXED SAN 2037Z
K4MUT LOW MIXED SAN 2045Z (CW Sweep completed on same QSO)
K7SV LOW MIXED SAN 2047Z (CW Sweep completed on same QSO)
K5IID QRP MIXED HAR 2142Z
Did you notice that last entry above, that is right a QRP station swept
all the FL counties... K5IID in West Virginia did that with 5 watts!
Add that to GM3POI's sweep from Europe, yes the Sweep is attainable...
at the rate we are having sweeps we could rename the Florida QSO Party
the Sunshine State Sweepstakes!
Why has the Florida QSO Party grown from just another QSO Party into a
major annual contesting event. PARTICIPATION! There are a lot of hams
who make special effort to not only man mobile teams ensuring
"sweep-ability" of the state, but others also proudly represent Florida
handing out QSOs from their fixed stations as well. Some of these hams
had awesome QSO totals last year, for example, the highest number of
QSOs made by a fixed station was K4XS with 2,457 QSOs... the mobile team
of N4TO and K1TO amassed 2,099 total QSOs by mobiling through 44
counties! That is right you read correctly 2,099 QSOs made by a mobile
station! We received 302 unique logs from Florida entrants, this
included logs received from all of the 67 counties.
We do however want to do better this year, and are hoping to get even
more stations - LIKE YOU active, especially on SSB.
What else makes for a successful contest? An active awards program, in
addition to beautiful certificates, the FQP has perhaps the biggest
plaque program of any contest. We try and note significant achievements
with the plaque program, here is a list of the 2,002 plaque winners:
FQP 2002 PLAQUE WINNERS
Top Florida CW K4LQ
Top Florida Phone K4XS
Top Florida Mixed Mode N4PN
Top Florida Mobile (Single Op) W5WMU
Top Florida Mobile (Single Op, CW Only) KN4Y
Top Florida Mobile (Multi-Op) N4TO (+K1TO)
Top Florida Mobile (Multi-Op, CW Only) K4FCG (K4OJ, N4KM)
Most QSO's Florida Single Operator K4XS
Top Florida Club Station Score NJ4M (W1ROX, WD4AHZ)
Top Florida Multi-Op W4/G4BUE (+M?BUE)
Top School Florida U. of Cent. FL ARC, K4UCF
Top Non-Florida CW K8IR
Top Non-Florida Phone K3TW
Top Non-Florida Mixed Mode N6MU
Top Non-Florida QRP K5IID
Top School Non-Florida Carl Hayden CHS ARC, N7UJJ
Largest Golden Log Non-Florida K4BAI
Top Canadian Mixed Mode VA3NR
Top DX Mixed Mode HA1AG
Top European CW GM3POI
1st station to work all Counties in FQP W1NN
That's 21 plaques!
The Florida Contest Group sponsors the FQP and hopes that you will give
the FQP a try - it IS a lot of fun, whether you are an out of stater
following the mobiles through the counties (note we publish the proposed
routes for the teams) or you're a Florida ham enjoying being on the
"DX" end of the pileups - having the world come to you.
Please contact me if you have any questions regarding the FQP, we aim to
please - you can start to find out more by going to the FQP web site
listed below... read the great write-up by WRTC co-champion and lead
adjudicator K1TO, and plan on keeping April 26th and 27th open!
FQP 2,003 will run from:
Saturday April 26th (from 1600Z April 26 - 0159Z April 27)
(then the mobiles sleep) and
Sunday April 27th (from 1200Z - 2159Z April 27)
these are two 10 hour windows of operating or 20 total hours.
To keep abreast of late breaking FQP news be sure to sign up for the FQP
e-mail reflector when you go to the web site (click on the FQP Reflector
button), important announcements and questions are fielded there...
please go to:
http://www.qsl.net/fqp
...bookmark it, and watch those colors change from Green to Orange as
Floridians check in!
There now are 24 days until the Florida QSO Party - see you then!
Jim, K4OJ
Florida Contest Group
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