Ham Radio QSO Parties

Hello all.

I have worked various Amateur Radio QSO Parties this year and have enjoyed them all. Thus far they were state QSO Parties.

I have some interest in lighthouses and realize the ARLHS and other groups organize several lighthouse related events during the year. You have probably heard “CQ Lighthouse” a few times on HF. I have looked at the various events, read the rules and considered participating. Other than a few QSOs here and there, I never did much. Some of the events have “QSO Party” in the name and seem to have the same “fun” aspect found in these events. Still I wondered why I did not participate. I finally figured out some reasons…

• The rules deviate from the traditional QSO Party format where QSO points are multiplied by some number (Counties, Sections, States, Prefixes, etc. worked) based on the theme of the party.
• Higher QSO points are available for contacts with certain members of certain organizations complicating bookkeeping; QSO points should be about the type of contact, not the person behind the mic/key.
• Speaking of bookkeeping, it is a bit of a cruel truth a contest “arrives” once it gains support from 3rd party logging programs. I have seen no “high end” logging software (such as N3FJP, N1MM or Writelog) support these events. There are some custom programs available, but this just emphasizes the point these lighthouse events are not trying to be like familiar contests; This leaves the casual weekend contest operator out. Let’s face it, speed counts during a contest; This is a contest and logging programs help you achieve high QSO rates.
• Some ham radio lighthouse organization’s events emphasize remembering the role played by lighthouses, lightships and their keepers. That’s a fine thing to do. However, this involves a minority of hams who maintain an active interest in lighthouses leaving other hams without an interesting operating contest to work.

I am attempting to organize a traditional Lighthouse QSO Party (LHQP) with the following attributes:

• Goal: Provide an event to encourage hams to put lighthouses, lightships, etc. on the air
• Traditional: The California and Virginia QSO Parties are the prototypes for the LHQP
• QSO Points: The typical 1 for PH, 2 for CW, 2 for Digital and 3 for Mobiles at Lights – simple and familiar
• Stations: Fixed, Mobile and/or Expedition
• Operating Time: 24 or so hours
• Bands: All except WARC (Traditional Contest Bands as this is a Contest not just an operating event)
• Power: High (over 150 W), Low (150 or less) and QRP (5 W or less, 10 W for PH)
• Multipliers: Well, I guess the lights, but, Wow, what high scores could be had – more discussion below
• Stations at Lights work any stations, other stations only work stations at lights
• Exchange for light stations: Serial Number and Light ID
• Exchange for other stations: Serial Number and State/Province or DX Country

Most QSO Parties for States have a well maintained and stable list of abbreviations for their Counties (Cities also in VQP); The LHQP will have a similar list. However, the list of lights is enormous, far exceeding the fifty to two hundred multipliers in the usual QSO Party contests.

The ARLHS World List of Lights (WLOL) has over 15,000 lights cataloged. The good news is the ARLHS already has a seven character (three letters and four numbers) identifier for each light ready for use.

Still a contest exchange needs to be short. Further discussion on a shorthand abbreviation for identifying a light is prudent. A common theme of state QSO Parties is to use only letters (usually three to five) in the multiplier identifier making good use of the radix 26 system.

Boiling down the number of lights to a subset might also make sense, but would be an enormous amount of work compared to just using the WLOL.

There are problems with light stations also being a multiplier. If you are a non light-station making contacts with lights, then most every contact you make is also a multiplier. That would make for a fun score to watch grow, but what’s the point of practically every light-station contact being a multiplier. Of course several stations might operate a popular light during the event, but I think this would be far less likely than what happens during State QSO Parties where getting new multipliers frequently takes a lot of effort – part of the fun.

If we were to organize multipliers almost any other way, we wind up grouping the light-station locations by some other variable.

One example is grouping by the body of water. In North America you might have Potomac River, Lake Ontario, Bay of Fundy, Atlantic Ocean, etc. This is straight forward.

Another possibility is grouping by political boundaries such as states, provinces, etc. This would be reasonably easy to do.

Still another might use Maidenhead Location System grid squares. This is a lot like VHF contests which offers the advantage of being familiar to many amateur radio operators. Indeed the WLOL already posts the sub-square id if the geographic coordinates are known.

Any of the above approaches de-emphasize the activation of lights. The first example could really be called the Body of Water QSO Party. The second looks a lot like the already existing North American QSO Party; Sigh… The third might have merit at Sub-Square precision. If six character Maidenhead Locator strings are used, the longest distance between neighbor sub-squares is about 12 km. That’s a pretty good compromise allowing the multiplier list to be smaller yet ensure most lights have their own multiplier. The six character Maidenhead Locator is only one character less than the seven character ARLHS number so does not save much on the QSO exchange. Examples include…

The Maidenhead Locator does not identify the light specifically, but well enough to make it obvious which one it is in most cases. In the case of several lights close together, such as a harbor, the operator will not get the benefit of activating several lights one after the other – a potential pitfall of this approach. On the other hand, grid hunters will appreciate this method.

Unlike the ideas above, making the lights the multipliers ensures rare lights are interesting for folks to operate since activating the “rare ones” will help others raise their scores making those folks The DX!. This fulfills one of the missions of the LHQP – Operate from as many lights as possible and give stations who do a competitive advantage.

Before planning goes any further one has to ask if anyone would care to participate in such an event before much volunteer effort is spent on the LHQP.

So I ask all of you out there in ham land…