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Through a post on the nogaqrp e-mail reflector, I learned from Jim W4QO that the QRP ARCI Spring QSO Party will be the weekend of April 7th and 8th.

Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday – Ouch with a capital “O”.

Sunday participation will be just about impossible.  I am not totally sure at this moment in time, but we usually spend the day with Marianne’s brother and his wife.  There may be a chance for an hour or two between Sunday morning Church services and leaving for there.

Saturday is going to be extremely hard also, as that is Holy Saturday which is generally a busy day at our household.  Maybe, if I am lucky, an hour or two in the late afternoon.

I am going to have to really try to mazimize my QSO rate for the miniscule amount of time that I will be on the air.

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP – When you care to send the very least!

I’ve written about the Virginia QSO Party a number of times in the past, so I’m going to keep this posting relatively short. I needed to spend some time getting my gear together for my trip to Florida later this week (where I plan to activate IOTA NA-034), but that left time for some contesting. There were a number of contests this weekend, but I decided to jump into the Virginia QSO Party (VaQP) as I’ve always had a lot of fun. I’m going to re-post my “soapbox” comments from my posting to the 3830 contest scores list. (That’s an email list where folks post their “claimed” scores after a contest. It’s not authoritative, but it gives you a quick chance to see how well you did as compared with other a lot fast than the official scores.)

Here’s what I wrote:
 

The VaQP is one of my favorite state QSO parties,and I’m glad that I had time to participate this year after missing the last couple of years. Given my location in northern NJ, the only bands that are usable are 40 & 80 (I’ve made a couple of contacts in the past on 160, but I don’t really have an antenna and it’s usually not worth the effort). This year, I had plans that kept me out Saturday evening so I didn’t get on to 75/80 at all. Late Sunday afternoon I tuned around for a bit on 80m but decided that instead of trying to work just the couple of stations that I could hear, I’d stick with 40 and submit as SOSB/40 (mixed mode).

I like this contest for a few different reasons: First, there’s enough activity to keep things going, but not so much that it’s a fight for a little-pistol station like me to have to work to make contacts. I could work everyone I could hear, and I appreciate the nice signal reports that I got from many stations. (Just 100w into a G5RV at about 35′ here.) Second, this is one of the few contests where I can get on and actually hold a run frequency for pretty much as long as I’d like. That’s not something that I get in the big DX contests! Third, this has got to be one of the friendliest bunch of of folks in any contest. When I had a small pileup going (for “rare” NJ!) I would move pretty quickly, but most times I had plenty of time to just throw in a quick word or two, and it was nice hearing when I was a new mult, or just having someone thank me for getting on to help give out points. It’s things like that the remind me why I like this contest so much.

Thanks to the organizers for putting this on, and I look forward to working everyone next year.

(SOSB/40 means that I operated as a single operator on just one band, which was 40m). That pretty much sums it up.  I spent a total of around 7.5 hours between Saturday and Sunday in this contest, and it really just flew by. Here’s my score summary (which is very short, since I only used 40m this time):

 Band  CW Qs  Ph Qs  Dig Qs
----------------------------
   40:   26    154       
----------------------------
Total:   26    154      0  Mults = 70  Total Score = 16,950

It’s been over two months since I last posted, and I realized that part of the reason for that is that I’ve been waiting for something “important enough” to write about. Along the same lines, I’ve skipped operating in a couple of contests recently where I’d done so in the past because I didn’t have enough time to put in more than a couple of hours in the chair. I decided to fix both of those things recently.

Last weekend was one of the “big” contests, the CW version of the ARRL DX contest. In this contest, DX stations work US & Canadian stations, and vice-versa. (As opposed to contests where anybody works anybody, or are primarily US/Canada only.) This is a 48 hour contest, and while I’ve never operated for that entire period, I do usually try to spend time operating both during the day and in the evening to take advantage of different types of propagation at the different times of day. Last weekend, I didn’t have time to do that, but I did have a few hours on Sunday afternoon. I decided to spend the afternoon working whatever stations I could. When I operate in a contest, I like to have some kind of goal for myself. For this contest, I knew that I wasn’t going to beat my own personal best, so I decided that I’d do nothing but work multipliers for my first 100 QSOs.

Generally, this is kind of silly thing to do, especially for person who works in “Search & Pounce” mode, where you’re trying to just make contacts. Multipliers have additional value, and there are all kinds of strategies on working multipliers versus just working stations, but most of those apply to bigger stations who know they’ll be competitive. In any case, I decided that it would be fun to do, and that’s exactly what I did. Once I hit 100 QSOs I started working any other station that I found, but I still managed to work 141 multipliers out of 169 contacts.

My final score was only a bit over 71,000 points, which in this contest, is very low, but I did have a good time doing it, and that’s the point. Hopefully, this will get me “back in the saddle” for both contesting and working on my blog.

For anyone interested, here’s my claimed score:

         Band    QSOs    Pts  Cty
           7      35     105   22
          14      66     198   58
          21      56     168   49
          28      12      36   12
       Total     169     507  141
       Score : 71,487

You can meet up with a whole bunch of buds and combine to form one of those multi-multi teams.  Or you can go solo and operate from your shack in a variety of categories.  You can even go and BE the DX, like some friends that I know – Bob N4BP and John K4BAI come to mind.

OR, you can take a portable rig, a hunk o’ wire, a battery and a tuner and head out to the great outdoors to enjoy some sunshine and some plain ol’ fashioned fun.

Any ideas who that might be, showing us the way?

Sure enough – Jim W1PID – enjoying the DX Contest from the banks of the Winnipesaukee River.

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP – When you care to send the very least!

Since 0000 UTC Saturday morning (Friday night here) the bands were absolutely humming.  Hard to find spectrum that wasn’t occupied by someone calling ‘CQ TEST” or with two stations engaging in an exchange. It’s now 0000 UTC Monday morning here, and the bands are eerily quiet.

The weekend was like all the others around here – super busy.  I did not get to spend nearly as much time on the air as I wanted to; but I did get a couple of hours last night and then a couple more this afternoon.  I added quite a few new countries to my Diamond DXCC tally.  Not as many as I would have liked; but I should be well on my way now.

The bands seemed to be in good shape and I even heard some activity on 10 Meters and joined in the fun there. My plan of action was to “cherry pick” and work the louder stations I was hearing, thinking that would give my QRP: signal the best chance of being heard.  I didn’t stick with that strategy, however and ended up working quite a few weak ones, too.  It pretty much turned out that I was able to work anyone that I called.  I even got a new one that I have never worked before – QRP or QRO. I worked ZD8Z on Ascension Island for the first time ever.  Unfortunately, the only station that wasn’t able to pick me out of the din was OA4SS down in Peru.  I tried for quite a while, but in the end was not successful.

I have tomorrow off for the long President’s Day weekend.  I am so tired right now that I am going to turn in early and I will get my QSO for the 20th, tomorrow.

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP – When you care to send the very least!