Monday, April 20, 2009

The QSO Party. A kinder, gentler contest

I remember my early days as a ham, tuning across that bands and hearing a curious call over and over: “CQ Contest”. I was intrigued, but also very intimidated. The rapid-fire replies and responses were, at times, difficulty to understand. How did they get that speedy delivery…coffee by the gallon? With no time to sip the brew, maybe they were getting their caffeine by intravenous. I quickly learned efficiency is critical. Once false move and the responding station may snarl harshly. I also found out the hard way that to give a signal report any less than 5-9 was akin to ham high treason (subject of an earlier post). While I’m overstating things a bit, the big international DX contests in particular, can strike fear into the less seasoned ham.

I spent some of the weekend taking part (saying I was competing might also be an overstatement) in the Ontario QSO Party. As an analogy, if the big-time DX contests, with their strict protocols, is like the UN security council, the QSO Party is more like a backyard bar-be-que. Sure, there are some guys seriously competing and trying to collect as many counties as possible, but the overall ‘feel’ is simply more relaxed. Want to add a few more comments during the contact....especially if you happen to know the other op? No problem, and you probably won’t get your head bitten off.

While most U.S. states have a QSO party, Ontario, I believe, is the only Canadian province with its own. It’s been around about 10 years now and this year was the first one I’ve participated in since 2005.

The exchange for a typical QSO Party (or q-so as it’s often pronounced) is a signal report (you might even get away with giving a real one) and the name of your county, often abbreviated to three or four letters. If you’re outside the host state/province, then a signal report and name of state, province or DXCC is sent.

Now, the issue of “counties” in Ontario is a bit of a head-scratcher. We have a real dog’s breakfast of jurisdictions. Many are indeed called counties, but we also have regional municipalities, districts, united counties and a few larger cities that aren’t part of any of these and are stand-alone entities. Luckily, every jurisdiction has a three-letter abbreviation. In all we have 50 of these things.

Maybe one of the reasons I like this contest is that I’ve actually won my county a few times. Not sure about this year, as the bands weren’t overly cooperative and I wasn’t able to spend as much time at it as I would have liked. But I’ll submit the log and we’ll see what happens. I heard just one other station from my county (Hastings-HAS), but he’s a pretty serious contester…drat! Maybe next year.

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