[PaQSO] CQ vrs S&P

[Michael Coslo]

> On Oct 14, 2015, at 5:00 PM, Al Z <zelna.alz at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Why not just look to the most popular state QSO parties to see how their
> rules compare and contrast to that of PA?  KISS
> On Oct 14, 2015 4:57 PM, "n3xls at juno.com" <n3xls at juno.com> wrote:

> 
Sounds like a good idea, Al

Let’s look at the California QSO Party, the biggest party in the country. I was a little surprised. 

Here are their rules:

http://cqp.org/Rules.html

Short version - what I gleaned from their ruleset:

As far as I can see, the basics are very similar, but we have a lot more features. We do try to keep things less stringent for people, our philosophy is get on the air and make contacts and have fun.

They run 30 hours contiguous but you can only operate 24 of them.

We run 23 hours broken up.

Objective -  Same as ours - instate works everyone and OOS and DX work instate.

We allow spotting, they have assisted class if you use it.

We accept paper logs, ADIF - when I can translate it - and Excel files. They accept Cabrillo only.

QSO Points -  Phone = 2 points CW = 3.points

We give our CW Ops more points per contact (1 SSB 2 CW)@ 2X versus 1.5X

They do not have RTTY or PSK -  we do

Multipliers  - They do States we do Sections

OOS is very similar - unless they changed a couple years ago, I based our VE mults on CAQSO.

note they do not use the new Ontario sections either.

Counties They have 58, and we have 67.

They use 4 letter counties, we use 3 letter counties.

Scoring:

CW points plus Phone times multipliers

They have a “County Expedition” class that is similar to our portable station

We have county lines, they do not.

We have Rovers, they do not

Mobile - we have two classes, they have one

They have school, YL, Youth, and New Contester

We have a first-timer mostly similar to the New Contester.

both have club competitions

We have a a lot of plaque classes they do not.

But the biggest surprise for me was, especially since I have taken so much heat for having summary sheets AT ALL -  is right here:

http://robot.cqp.org/cqp/logsubmit-form.html

A summary sheet. Their's is html, ours is pdf.



- 73 Mike N3LI -