[ILQSO] Advice for QSO Party organizers?

[Peg Haese KB9LIE]

Dave, the IL and WI contests are both short and sweet. 7 or 8 hours is plenty, except for CA, TX, PA, and the like. Shorter contests give both big guns and little pistols a good workout.

Mobiles are crucial to success but seem to prefer CW. Weather (time of year) and fuel prices come into play here.

Decide up front if your contest will allow county-line contacts, i.e. one QSO counts for only one county or can count for two or more. WI only allows one, IL allows two or more.

Then whether or not to have a power multiplier, with QRP counting most, then low power (generally up to 150W), and high power being least.

Set up a website, plus a group on Yahoo, QTH, or wherever. This really helps. Encourage people to post their plans. ILQP does a great job of this, especially the map.

Don't limit the bands or modes. 160 and 2M or 440 have their fans.

Send out plenty of certificates in all categories, they are cheap (are you listening, IL?). Give nice prizes for the top ops in several categories, maybe get donations. Illinois Edibles are a good model to follow.

Really promote the club competition and award. This gets casual contesters involved, just to help out.

Picking a date is important too, I personally don't like more than one contest per day but that's getting harder to schedule. Logging is hard for days with multiple contests going on and I'm not sure it helps participation.

Good luck. Start small and grow.

Peg KB9LIE in far SW Wisconsin

--- On Wed, 4/1/09, ai9e_qrp at yahoo.com wrote:

A bunch of '0'-landers here are trying to put together an Iowa QSO-Party.  What advice would the ILQP group have for us?  Things to do - or not do?

73 - Dave Cripe NM0S