[PaQSO] Digital?

[Kay Craigie]

Although I would personally enjoy adding a narrow-band digital mode such as
PSK31 to the contest, making it a 3-mode contest, I'm not sure it's really
practical given the jumbled-up situation on 40 meters where so much of our
in-state operation takes place. 

To me the arguments about giving advantages to people who could and would
operate digital don't hold much water. Today, some people only operate phone
and others only operate CW. It may be harder to get the all-67 sweep if you
operate only one mode -- I wouldn't know, since I always operate both -- but
maybe that just adds to the challenge and therefore adds to the fun for the
folks who stick to one mode only. Maybe some people would choose to operate
the contest only on digital, just to see how it would be. Some folks would
operate 2 out of the 3 modes, and we shouldn't assume that the two  would
always be phone and digital! I meet a lot of ops on digital modes now who
mainly do CW when they aren't on digital.

Well, here's a thought. There are some club-sponsored digital contests that
are stand-alone activities (the Troy Amateur Radio Aasociation, for example,
sponsors some -- see http://www.n2ty.org/seasons/tara_seasons.html). What if
some club or group started a Pennsylvania Digital Party with rules as
similar as possible to the PQP, but on a different weekend? If it proved
popular, then there could discussion with NARC about merging the PDP and the
PQP?

I'm always a fund of ideas for how somebody else can do some work ;-)

73 - Kay N3KN