Ten ways to score high in the Virginia QSO Party
The Virginia QSO Party is an excellent mix of many operating styles, habits, skill levels and license levels. For the past several years the Fauquier Amateur Radio Association has worked very hard to bring home individual and club plaques. Here is a top ten list of individual operations that did well…
- If you are mobile and have 2M/440 FM equipment go to Skyline Drive and work the whole of Northern Virginia.
- If you are mobile in Northern Virginia, draw a route which includes City of Alexandria, Arlington County, City Falls Church, Fairfax County, Fairfax City, Prince William County, City of Manassas Park, City of Manassas, etc. You can work the same station over and over again if you change your venue and this area has lots of boundaries to cross in a short distance.
- Plan VHF/UHF FM ops for Saturday 2PM through the evening. Plan on getting back out after Church time.
- If you are operating fixed from home, get on HF and concentrate on 80 and 40 meters with a Near Vertical Incident Skywave (NVIS) antenna… they are easy… get one.
- Mobiles attempting HF should probably concentrate on 20M verticals. You will have some success with 80 and 40 whips, but unless it is bent over for NVIS, results will be poor.
- Figure out a county or city with poor history of past QSOs, go there and operate 40 and 80 meters.
- Ensure you have a good contest-focused computer logging program – you will wonder how you got along without one. (See article on this site)
- Technicians flood the streets with FM mobiles so if you are operating fixed from home put up a tall vertically polarized antenna to add these 3 point contacts to your score.
- QSO rates go way down in the middle of the night – it is ok to take a short nap. Better to be refreshed in the morning than dog tired after making o’dark-thirty QSOs at three per hour.
- If you run an expedition, don’t skimp on antennas. The expedition rules don’t require mobile antennas only portable ones… make the most of it and get a good signal on the HF bands. (see article on this site)
- CW is alive and well with the VAQP, but plan Phone contacts too or you will run out of QSOs to make.
Yes that’s right… my list goes to eleven.
