I operated the Solar Eclipse QSO Party on Monday. To be honest, I’m not sure that the eclipse had that big of an effect on HF propagation. Propagation seemed to be better to the west than normal, but I’m not normally on during the afternoon, so that might just have been normal, anyway. Of course, my 100 QSOs are not all that significant in and of themselves, so we’ll have to wait until the HamSci folks crunch all of the numbers. It will be interesting to see what they come up with.
Having said that, I do have a few other comments about the SEQP:
- It took me a while to get used to copying grid squares. I don’t do VHF/UHF contests, though. That may be one reason I had a hard time copying them. To be honest, a couple of times I resorted to looking someone up on QRZ.Com to get the complete grid square.
- It was also a trick giving out RST reports other than 599. This includes both giving and receiving. Often, I would give out say a 579 report, only to have the guy come back at S9 on his second transmission. Sometimes the difference was even more than two S units. The QSB was that bad. Hopefully, the reports will all average out over the thousands of contacts that will be reported.
- It was also kind of tricky typing in the correct RST before hitting the function keys that the N1MM contesting software uses to actually send the exchange. Think about the sequence:
- You call “CQ SEQP.”
- You hear someone send their callsign.
- Based on that short transmission, you have to decide on what RST to give them.
- Then, you have to type that RST into N1MM.
- Finally, you have to hit the right function keys to send the exchange.
- What I ended up doing was to first hit F5, which sent the other stations call sign, then I typed in the RST, then finally, hit F2, which sent the rest of the exchange.
- Some guys didn’t get the memo. They were sending 599s to anyone no matter how weak or how strong. I know this because I doled out a few 449s and got 599s in return. There’s no way I was that strong if they were S4 here. I don’t think there were enough of them, though, to seriously skew the results.
- Last, but not least, I worked four stations whose call signs spelled words: W2BEE, AC3AN, N2SO, and N4NO. I have QSLs from all of them, except for AC3AN. My card is already on its way to him. That evening, after the SEQP, I also happened to work N0YET, so it was a good day all around for me.
Don Keith says
Dan,
Thanks for the two SEQP 40-meter contacts. I actually began giving the best RST I could manage when searching and pouncing. But when I called CQ–to give the Reverse Beacon Network opportunities to capture me and my signal strength–I was like you and had a hard time getting enough signal to give an honest report, only to have the calling station be much stronger or much weaker during his exchange. I eventually just started giving all 599s, but primarily because of observation #1 below. Yes, I was one of those goofballs who gave a 599 and then had to make the other station repeat his exchange three or four times.
My observations:
1) I don’t see how a quick RST will be of much value in determining propagation oddities due to the eclipse. At best, such a report is highly subjective.
2) The best indicator of prop anomalies would be the Reverse Beacon Network, but that requires everyone to call CQ. And if everyone calls CQ, who is going to answer them?
3) 40M CW sounded like typical daytime 40M CW to me. If there was a difference, it was negligible. Maybe it was more pronounced in the area of totality. At my QTH, we were at 97%.
4) The QSP did add a bit of excitement to the whole thing for me, though. It was fun working the other guys, including you, Dan.
73,
Don N4KC
http://www.n4kc.com
http://www.donkeith.com