[ILQSO] RE: Peg KB9LIE State QSO party questions

[Hank Greeb]

The Queen City Emergency Net, W8VND, a non contest group, with perhaps 
three or four "casual contester types" in its membership, has been 
rather consistent in winning either Multi-Multi or aggregate club score 
plaque (or both) ever since they started out.  They have a "modest" club 
station, with a tri band yagi at 60' and a couple wire antennae for 80 
and 40 metres.  90+% of their membership can't muster more than 10 or 20 
Q's per hour on phone. and I can count the CW ops on the fingers of one 
hand.  Yet they manage to get 6 or more stations on for the aggregate 
club score competition, or sometimes they merge together and activate 
the club station.

They'd never be competitive in Sweepsteaks or the "big" DX contests.  
The only exception was when N's and X"s were brand new prefixes and 
suffixes.  They borrowed my call, entered the Phone CQWPX DX contest and 
had a blast!  I got swamped with QSL card requests - probably made DXCC 
from that effort, but didn't count the cards nor the contacts because it 
wouldn't be fair, since I didn't even operate in the contest.  In Field 
Day they're typically in the 50%ile of the eighth region.

Personally, I'm not enough of a contester to be competitive even in 
state QSO parties.  We did manage to squeak into 2nd place on 
multi-multi OQP from a modest field station as W8B.  And, it was fun to 
make several hundred contacts (and over a thousand "log" contacts) at 
the four county intersection of  CHAM/DOUG/EDGR/VERM.  I was 3rd overall 
in the portable category.  If there'd be enough competition amongst the 
2 and 3 county line ops, I'd favor a rules change to give certificats to 
ops by number of simultaneous counties activated.

I do encourage anyone and everyone to submit a log.  I once submitted a 
log with 2 contacts - when I got in on the tail end of one of the QSO 
parties.  Folks in Ohio and Michigan say they get <10% of logs from call 
letters which appear in the other logs.

73 de n8xx Hg

Jim Reisert AD1C wrote:

>--- Samuel Saladino <ortracr at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>  
>
>>I think there's a number of us who will probably
>>never win a State QSO Party due to limitations of antennas, power, radios
>>etc. but we still enjoy the fun of participating.
>>    
>>
>
>On the flip side, if you are the only one from your state that enters, you
>*might*  win something.  That's unlikely to happen in a major DX or domestic
>(i.e. SS) contest.  That's why I always try to submit my logs (also to ensure
>visible participation).
>
>73 - Jim AD1C
>