Meriden ARC Web Site | Castle Craig Chapter 10-10


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What A HORIBLE Contest Weekend!
#1

Honestly I'm about ready to give up on NEQP! I'm having problems with N1MM Plus and the CwGet Interface, I've filed a bug report on it. I spent the first two hours Saturday trying to get it working right, (it worked before what changed?)

Not only that 10 meters is totally useless this weekend, and 15 is not much better, (4 CW contacts), of the 51 contacts so far 30 are on 20 CW, 10 on 20 RTTY and only 7 on 20 SSB. Very few stations calling for NEQP and sitting and calling CQ gets no answers.

IMHO the biggest problem is that NEQP starts too late on Saturday. All day long there were a boatload of stations running the 7QP party. Then NEQP starts at 4 PM and if you worked the fixed stations you get sorry dupe, and have to take the time to ask them to dupe you in their log for YOUR QSOP. Or the mobiles have already put on 10 or 15 counties each. Plus you have the ARI contest in Italy and two or three other state QSO parties running.

Last year I asked Tom why the QSO Party started so late and mentioned the other QSO parties running and how we are missing out on tons of contacts. The reason was that it was because of NearFest and the consolidation made because the "big" DX stations wanted to go to a flea market. Well these are the guys who have the big antennas on 40 and 75 and spend the rest of the night working all the contacts there.

By Sunday 7QP is over and all the rovers are heading home, ARI is done along with some or all of the other QPs and the ones that played radio all day are "done" for the weekend and off to mow the lawn or do other things.

I think that NEQP has to change and get in line with the other QPs and tests going on that weekend. Participation is down and we are rapidly loosing the band conditions as we move close to the end of the cycle. 20 meters stands to be the "money band" but the time of the NEQP it's way out of line to take advantage of the available multis and contacts.

And I need to decide what I am going to do next year. Do I work all those 7QP early contacts for my County Hunters book? I put some great counties in the book this year. (Or) Just log the 7QP, ARI and make a token few contacts in NEQP next year? It's still up in the air.

Thanks for listening to my grousing!

Al - N1API
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