KB6NU's Ham Radio Blog

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Operating notes: State QSO Parties, how do you decide who to call?

Posted: 03 May 2021 08:05 AM PDT
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My state QSO party challenge continues. On Saturday, April 17, I worked the
Michigan QSO Party. That was a lot of fun, because, of course, Im in
Michigan and was one of the sought-out stations. I operated for about six
hours total, and once I hit 20,000 points, about 9:30 pm, I quit.

My final totals were 161 CW QSOs, 6 phone QSOs, 56 CW multipliers, 6 phone
multipliers, and a total score of 20,336. Thats not too bad, Id say,
considering that I was only on the air for half of the 12 hours.
3830scores.com has me at #8 in the single operator, low power category.

On Saturday, April 24, I worked the Florida QSO Party. I didnt operate for
very long, though, barely enough to qualify for participation in the State
QSO Party Challenge. One thing that was odd is that I was often beaten out
in the pileups by European stations. Someone on Twitter opined that the
reason for that is because the Florida stations had their beams pointed
towards Europe, and I was off the side of their antennas.

This Saturday, I worked the Indiana, Delaware, 7 States, and New England
QSO Parties. Working all four was made much easier by the N1MM logging
software. Instead of creating four separate logs, you could log all of your
contacts with a single log.

There were lots of stations on the air, mostly from New England. Overall, I
made 104 QSOs in about 3-1/2 hours of operating. Now, I have to figure out
how to separate the QSOs and submit my logs.
How do you decide who to call?

The other night I called CQ on 40m, and immediately got two replies. The
first station I heard was on the weak side, while the second was stronger.
The first operator was sending slowly, while the second op was sending a
bit faster.

I decided to call the first station because it was the first that I heard.
I hadnt copied the whole call sign, so I sent the part I did hear with a
question mark. Even though he was weak, we still had a nice QSO.

The moral of the story is dont always choose the stronger station. The
weaker, slower station might be just starting or getting back on the air
and your QSO would mean more to that op than to the stronger, more
experienced ham.

The post Operating notes: State QSO Parties, how do you decide who to call?
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