Operating Notes: PA QSO Party edition

When I post these “operating notes,” they’re usually about three different topics. Today, however, all of these notes are about the recently-concluded PA QSO Party. I only operated for about three hours total of the 22-hour contest, but it was fun. Here are my operating notes:

Encouraging activity

My story actually starts a couple of days ago. On Thursday, I worked a couple of guys in PA, and although they were good operators, when I asked them if they planned to work the contest, they both demurred, saying that they weren’t really contesters. I explained to them that QSO parties were pretty low-key and a good way to get their feet wet in contesting. And, as a bonus, other stations would be bending over backward to work them as they were located in PA. I even offered to get on the phone and give them a little coaching.

My spiel resonated with them, and one guy asked to talk on the phone. Before we could do that, however, something came up, and I never did hear him on the air. I did manage to work the second guy, so I’m happy about that. I’m going to email him and ask him what he thought of his first contest.

Good propagation

I’m in a pretty good spot for working PA. It’s one hop to most locations in the state. Even so, the propagation seemed pretty good this weekend. I worked a little phone (what me? phone??) this afternoon and more than once I got the comment, “Great signal.” All this from 90W into a homebrew Cobra doublet.

And, talking about phone….

There were a lot of phone stations operating this contest. Many times, you really have to search for phone stations in a QSO party. Today, however, there were phone stations from about 7185 kHz up to 7285 kHz. Working phone allowed me to add some multipliers that I may not have gotten on CW, including WES, SCH and DCO.

Working phone in a QSO party is fun because most of the operators are so laid back. I heard one guy tutoring a station in Alabama how to work a QSO party. I waited and listened, too, because the guy was in a county that I didn’t have yet.

The funniest phone contact I had was with a guy who said to me, “Hey, I know that call. You’re kinda famous!” I laughed and replied, “Well, one of my friends here says that I’m ‘ham-famous.'” You don’t get that kind of banter on CW, for obvious reasons.

Final score

Here are my final scores (as reported by N1MM):

Band	Mode	QSOs	Pts	Mults
3.5	CW	23	47	12
7	CW	32	64	19
7	LSB	18	18	6
Total	Both	73	128	37
Score:	5,136

Not too bad for only three hours of operation.