Good day all

The Pennsylvania QSO Party is being held October 13 and 14, 2007.

The Pennsylvania QSO Party is celebrating it's 50th anniversary as the
Friendly QSO Party.

A number of changes have been made to the party this year.

As usual Pennsylvania Ops work PA Counties, ARRL and VE sections, and
DX. Out of state Ops work PA Counties. Counties and sections earn
multipliers. Available modes are CW, SSB and FM, PSK 31 and RTTY.

CW Contacts are worth 2 points per QSO on 80 meters and 160 meters, and
1.5 points on 40 and above.

RTTY and PSK contacts are worth 2 points each.

SSB and FM contacts are worth 1 point each.

Contact with the Special Event station is worth 200 points.

Double score for QRP.

Mobile stations earn 500 point bonus for each county.
see rules for details.

Rover Stations earn 500 point bonus for each Operating position
see rules for details.

Certificates for all county and section winners, plaques for class winners.

For those not familiar with the PAQSO Party, a lot more info can be
found at:

http://www.nittany-arc.net/paqso.html

Changes:


The PSK31 and RTTY classes tried as an experiment last year, are now
included as a regular part of the party.

The rules have been greatly expanded due to popular demand. Instead of a
one page rule sheet, we have added definitions and clarifications where
needed. While the rules of the party are more or less the same as last
year, the bands of operation have been defined, classes have been
defined, and a few other tweaks have been added. County line station
qualifications have been defined.

We have added a few new plaque classes.

A 20 meter "Good Neighbor" plaque has been added to encourage PA
operators to get on 20 meters and operate more Out of State Ops.

An SSB only plaque has been added to complement the CW only plaque

A new class has been added - Multi Op Multi Transmitter Portable. This
corrects a weird rule situation in which people who wanted to operate at
say a camp with several friends and a couple transmitters had to either
operate as a one location rover or could operate as a portable, but not
compete Since MM portable sounds like one major lot of fun, it was the
least we could do.

The club award has been reinstated. Sum the scores from OPs in your club
and highest count wins. Trophy for first place, second through fifth get
certificates.

The extension of the rules prompted another change.

Since the rules changes brought the rules to 8 pages, and that would
double the size of the party mailings, it was decided to eliminate the
mailings. Results and announcements are taking place via PDF file. In
addition, this will enable the party results to come out much sooner
than before. Given the universality of Adobe Reader these days, this
should end up as a very positive change. The pdf's will be emailed out
to recent party participants, or they can be downloaded from the Web
site at:

http://www.nittany-arc.net/paqso.html

Certificates will still be printed and mailed by the party committee.

In order to ensure more rapid and accurate delivery of party promotional
items, a T-Shirt Czar is being appointed so that that part of the post
party work is accomplished in tandem with the scoring. There will be a
special and new design 50th anniversary T-Shirt this year, as well as
new design Coffee Mugs.

We are having a different special event station this year. There will be
5 stations distributed in the state operating under the W3P special
event call sign. One of the stations will be in mobile operation, and
the others will be in fixed position.

A 50th Anniversary certificate will be sent to stations who make contact
with all 5 Special event stations. To qualify, work all 5 stations, and
send a SASE to:

PAQSO Party 2007 c/o NARC
P.O. Box 614
State College PA 16804-0614


For the future.......

In 2009, the 1.5 point CW QSOs are going away. At that point, all CW
QSOs will be worth 2 points.

County line stations point value will be revisited in the off season. We
will possibly be giving out 1 QSO point per claimed county, instead of 1
QSO for the entire communication.


-73 de Mike KB3EIA -