[PaQSO] [CQ-Contest] QSO Parties

Fri Mar 13 00:18:24 EDT 2009

Scott,

While I wish you all the best in bringing the NY QSO Party back, I would strongly advise you to reconsider the fall weekends in question.

Operating two state QSO Parties on the same weekend is often do-able.  But to do it with two adjacent states, when one is well established and one is a revival, is looking for confusion.  Stations in-state in each state will be literally on top of each other; stations out-of-state will have a great deal of trouble working each or only one of the two state parties.

I speak from experience on this.  Other long-time Pa QSO Ops will remember that in years past, Sunday afternoon of the contest weekend was shared with the IN QSO Party.  And this was in the days when Pa QSO wasn't as big (in terms of number of participants) as it is today.  40 meters especially could be pretty tough & slow going, when well-meaning IN ops would tell you that your county wasn't in their state... of course it wasn't... or try to hand out dual numbers, one for each contest (better just to hand out one SN and explain later)... or to have a station tell you to shush (or use less polite terminology) because they were trying to work a station in the other state that they could hear but you couldn't.

In the words of David Letterman's intern:  "Awkward!"

The CA QSO Party weekend might work a little better for you, solely because of different propagation between the east coast and west coast on particular bands at particular times of day.  But considering both the size & popularity of the CA contest (those bottles of wine they offer ARE attractive, aren't they?  Too bad they can't ship them to winners in PA),  I doubt that that would be a good idea either.  But I may be wrong and they may feel differently; you should talk with them.

You may want to reconsider "Stew Perry" October weekend you mentioned.  Stew Perry is a 24 hour 160 meter contest -- in December; the October weekend is the "warm up" event.  So, this wouldn't affect the other bands.  You could simply skip 160 as an NYQP contest band -- no conflict!  

The ARRL September VHF weekend isn't a bad choice, either.  That weekend WAS for a good many years the Pa QSO Party weekend.  PaQP moved to the 2nd weekend in October after the ARRL re-aligned their 3 V/UHF contests to be on the "same" weekend of the month in question; again, at the time, PaQP wasn't anywhere near as big as it is now, and at the time, the Nittany ARC was very much a VHF contest club, so this would have caused real problems trying to get people to operate in the QSO Party AND promote operating the K3HKK shack up on the mountaintop.  Yes, I realize you'd have a conflict to work out with the SSB Sprint, but that's not unsolveable either; you may just have to be creative.

I would not recommend scheduling a state QSO party on any of the "big" international DX contest weekends.  The exception might be for CQ WW RTTY, but if you do that, I'd suggest not including digital modes in the NYQP to avoid conflicts.  Same would go for the Sweepstakes weekends, unless you'd do the "opposite" mode (ie, NYQP SSB on the CW weekend and vice versa).  Even so, many of your best potential ops will be busy in the established contests these weekends.  Why go to all the work to hold a contest if nobody competes?

Offhand, I don't know what else to tell you.  Are you sure none of the April weekends would work for you?  

73, ron w3wn

-----Original Message-----
From: cq-contest-bounces at contesting.com
[mailto:cq-contest-bounces at contesting.com]On Behalf Of w2lc at twcny.rr.com
Sent: Tuesday, March 10, 2009 4:56 PM
To: cq-contest at contesting.com
Subject: [CQ-Contest] QSO Parties

QSO Parties

I have been asked on several occasions to resurrect the New York QSO Party. Seems that there are a few people out there with good memories, that remember that the SUNY at Buffalo ARC sponsored the NYQP years ago, and that I did all the arrangements for a few years, as well as other UB Alumni before me. If I remember correctly RPI, Cornell and other NY school clubs also sponsored the NYQP over the years. I believe sponsorship was passed around from school to school for awhile.

So with that said comes the hard part, rules and a date for the NYQP. OK the rules seem pretty easy, since I basically copied the successful CQP and PAQP rules. Thanks guys. I took the easy way out, but put in a few of my own tweaks.

Now for the date. This is the hard part. Winter months are OUT. I live in upstate NY and it has a tendency to snow here, a lot, especially near Buffalo and Watertown along Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. A fall date would be nice with the cooler weather and leaves changing. Maybe in the spring, but I see a lot of other state QSO parties then, and contest limiters like college graduations and high school graduations to contend with. Winter can still play havok here through the end of March or so. Some decent driving weather would be a big plus. I would have to avoid NY hamfests in the spring and maybe neighboring state hamfests. So a date in the fall is the option of choice.

Fall Dates/weekends that are definitely OUT:

CW Sprint Sept 6
ARRL Sept VHF QSO Party & SSB Sprint Sept 12-14
CQWW RTTY Sept 26-27
Stew Perry Oct 17-18
CQWW SSB Oct 24-25
ARRL SS CW Nov 7-8
ARRL SS SSB Nov 14-15
CQWW CW Nov 27-29

I think I got all the dates right. 

December thru March, too many contests in December, and usually too cold and snowy anyway

Fall dates that may be good in order of preference:

October 10-11, PAQP is this weekend
October 3-4, CQP is this weekend, and there is a local conflict on the 3rd
October 31 – November 1, a long shot - in between big contests
November 21-22 – maybe but probably not, too many other contests this month

There is the hazard of choosing a weekend already used by another good QSO party. Will it sit well with them? Or maybe more activity might be better for them too?

Anything else to be aware of?
I can think of a few like logging software/checking, sponsorship, etc...

My date choices are #1 October 10-11, #2 October 3-4, even though these are the PAQP and CQP weekends. 
So CQP and PAQP and other fellow contesters what do you think? 

Or should I just pretend no one ever asked me about doing the NYQP again? I might do this, so don't tell anyone. :)

Thanks, if responding directly please send responses to W2LC at twcny.rr.com

73 Scott W2LC

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