[CQ-Contest] Fwd: Important Update for the 2020 Georgia QSO Party

[Jeff Clarke]

Jim(s),

Thanks for your suggestions.  We are discussing within the SECC the 
subject of holding a one day QSO party for this year. From the feedback 
I'm getting the consensus right now is that for this year we probably 
hold a one day QSO Party on Saturday April 11th from noon-midnight. I 
will make an announcement before this weekend if we choose this route.

BTW the reason we have a two day QSO Party in Georgia (pre-COVID-19) is 
our state has 159 counties which is 2nd to only Texas. Many of the 
counties are small and we have a regular contingent of rover stations 
who activate many counties every year. Some out of state participants 
have come close to working all the counties because of our rover 
activity. I seem to remember one year that W0BH came to operate the GQP 
with N4PN. Bob and Paul activated 80 counties by themselves during the 
weekend! The success of both the GQP and FQP can be attributed to the 
large number of rover stations that are active year after year. In a 
normal year I don't believe all the counties could be activated in just 
one day. This year we had two people who planned to come from outside of 
Georgia to activate a large number of counties as a rover and I told 
them not to come because of the restrictions that have been placed on 
travel within Georgia. Having no rover stations is going to greatly 
change the complexion of our QSO party this year.

Stay tuned for further announcements.

Jeff KU8E  GQP Director


On 4/2/2020 03:14 PM, Jim wrote:
> In these days of fast changing orders and policies, a 9 day notice for GQP changes would quite reasonable.  Those who had serious plans - mainly the mobiles - have already figured things out and changed those plans.
>
> This year will be a good test of my belief that state QSO parties longer than one day make no sense. Nobody is going to sit at home in Ohio for two days trying to find every possible Georgia station, especially when there are no “new” mobile QSOs to be made. And perhaps more important, nobody sitting at home in GA or FL is going to want to spend a second day trying to scrape up random new guys who happen to be passing by.
>
> (In normal times Florida with a full complement of mobiles provides enough action to keep out of state CW ops interested, but I’d still think the second day as a FL fixed station would be quite boring.)
>
> I’d suggest that a 12 hour test  for GAQP - noon to midnight EDT - would be quite sufficient.  And not our decision, but I agree that adding 80 meters to FQP for this year would make sense.
>
>
>
> 73  -  Jim
>
>
>
>
>
>> On Apr 2, 2020, at 1:49 PM, James Cain <jamesdavidcain at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Jeff: There IS time. It's the internet age, after all. I am pretty
>> sure the ARRL news editor would be glad to have a news item that he
>> could put on their web page headlined:
>>
>> Georgia QSO Party Fights Virus with Timely Rules Changes
>>
>> A lot of clubs and groups pick up those ARRL news stories and pass them along.
>>
>> Nothing ventured, nothing gained, OM.
>>
>> Jim K1TN/Florida
>>
>>
>> Jim,
>>
>>
>> I would consider that for GQP but I don't know that I have time to get the
>> word out in time since it's only 9 days away.
>>
>> I know it's been discussed before and rejected but allowing 80 meters in the
>> FQP for just this year might be a good idea. Maybe even allow 160 meters as
>> well. I'm afraid that activity is going to be way down without having
>> mobiles to chase around. I just updated my GQP activity map on the web page
>> yesterday and we went from over 2/3 of the GA counties covered to less than
>> 1/3 because I removed the planned mobile/portable operations.  Ouch that
>> hurts ! Plus it didn't help that GQP falls on Easter weekend this year.
>>
>> Jeff
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