New England QSO Party
Call: W6YX
Operator(s): W6LD N7MH K6ENT W7SW N6DE
Station: W6YX
Class: M/S Fixed HP
QTH: CA
Operating Time (hrs): 18
Summary:
Band CW/Dig Qs Ph Qs
------------------------
80:
40: 10
20: 81
15: 50
10: 133
6:
2:
222:
432:
------------------------
Total: 119 274 Counties = 63 Total Score = 32,256
Club: Northern California Contest Club
Comments:
We had a fun weekend! Our primary objective in participating in NEQP was to try
Writelog at W6YX with most of our primary ops present. W6YX has been TR
territory for several years, with many of our operators accustomed to every TR
feature, keystroke, nook, and cranny. Because of this, a transition to a
different contest logger is met with some trepidation. But recognizing some
important improvements over TR, and as one W6YX club member said, "Join the
1980s, and use ethernet and Windows," we wanted to give Writelog a try.
I think the conclusion was that Writelog has some good improvements in many
areas, but does not have a few of the advanced bandmap and CW features we
regularly use at W6YX with TR. We'll work with W5XD of Writelog to suggest a
few new features.
Going M/S in this contest was not the best strategy. You want to be able to
frequently QSY to different bands and modes to track the mobiles and work
stations as many times as you can. We used the WPX M/S rules (10 minute rule
for bands and modes, and a mult station on another band).
We set up a second station to operate S/O with our own callsigns when things got
boring. In addition to W6YX, we activated K6ENT (~15 QSOs), W7SW (~15 QSOs),
and N6DE (37 QSOs x 21 counties for 987 points). Often, the second station and
W6YX would be operating simultaneously! Sometimes on Sunday afternoon, whenever
I found a W1 CQing, I dupe checked him on the W6YX station, and then ran over to
the second station to work him with my own callsign before he disappeared! This
did not help to maximize the W6YX score, but we found nothing in the NEQP rules
to prevent this, and thought that more QSOs for the W1s meant more fun for them
(and us).
W6YX had several QSOs with certain stations.
N1SR/M - 11 QSOs
K1XX - 8 QSOs
NB1B, AA1ON - 7 QSOs
Thanks to the mobiles for covering many of the rare counties!
We tried CQing at several points, but ended up getting mostly non-New England
stations. It started to become quite humorous after a while. Some of our
favorite responses were, "Is New Jersey in New England?" and "I'm 10 miles away
from the Connecticut border. Can we make a contact anyway?" John told him yes,
and asked if he could drive 10 miles to give us another QSO! I don't think he
ever did. :)
Good job by the organizers in their first year of NEQP. There seemed to be
quite a bit of support from California in this contest. We look forward to
contacting all of the New England stations during the California QSO Party on
October 5-6!
73...
-Dean - N6DE
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.hornucopia.com/3830score/
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