Hello Bruce...
First off, there is a contest or QSO party or a sprint or something just about
every weekend all year long. I think that there are only a few weekends during
the year that some event or another is not taking place on the bands. This
weekend, there are several events which are running beside the CW County
Hunter's
contest; the Texas QSO party, the Oregon QSO party and the ARI contest (Italy).
There may be one or two others - I do not remember right now. The rules are in
QST (and CQ, I suspect).
Specifically, about the CW County Hunter's contest - it is a 48 hour event, no
time limits. You may work a station once per band, but if it is a mobile
station,
you can work that station again on the same band from each different county that
station operates from. The exchange is QSO number, (plus an M for mobiles), RST,
county and state. So I might send: NR 1M 599 SALT LAKE UT as my first QSO from
Salt Lake county Utah. There are usually a half-dozen to a dozen mobiles or so
running around different parts of the country dishing out different counties, so
if you are operating from a fixed station, part of the strategy is keeping an
ear
on the mobiles that are moving around so that you can catch them from different
counties. Most of the activity is on 20 meters, but you can find some on 40 and
a
little on 15, depending on conditions. There may also be some mobiles down in
Texas on the CW bands which will give you a QSO number for the CH test if you
ask
for it. QSOs with mobile stations are also weighted to encourage particpants to
keep looking for them - 3 points a pop, I believe. I do not have the rules handy
so all of this is out of my failing memory. The scoring is QSO points times the
number of different counties that you worked, so with over 3000 possible
multipliers
the scores can get to be pretty big if you spend much time at it. The
interesting
thing about this is that if you are a mobile station you are almost
like a DX station,
and you will have a horde of fixed and mobile stations after you as you go from
one
county to the next. Hope this helps. CU this weekend.
Alan
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