This is the North American QSO party and it takes place in January of each year, you have a cw version and a Phone version on separate weekends. Unlike other qso parties this one only lasts a few hours.
The object is to work as many stations as you can, you exchange your name and state, so for state hunters and county hunters this is ideal and gives many an opportunity to fatten their state, or county totals.
I for one just enjoy the attention, since every year I am swamped with callers, this year was no exception, I was very busy on cw and ssb on twenty and 40. This past weekend was the ssb version of the QP and I must question if any other stations from Kentucky ever operate this fun party?
Judging by the constant pile up of stations on these two bands I certainly wonder if there is any activity from my state during this party?
I had no problem working every call district and the only area I never heard was Hawaii. of course the KH6 boys were welcome to jump in, but I heard nothing from them.
However, I did manage to work all the states with the exception of Arizona, Hawaii, Kansas, North and South Dakota,plus my own state. Not a single contact on ssb on 40, or 20.
I was working 40 meter ssb around 5pm, the pile ups were huge and occasionally I would hear the weaker western and North western states tail ending the pile up. To my surprise several KL7 stations in Alaska.
Thing is I rarely work any one state side unless it is sweepstakes, or NA QP, mostly I am on the hunt, or working DX stations, so this may account for so many stateside stations piling up frequency when I do appear and work state side stations.
Our Canadian neighbors were active from the ve3, 4, 5, 6, 7 provinces, even one Cuban station on 40 called, but no interest from South of the Border.
For those operators just beginning their search for states, or counties I would recommend you give the November sweepstakes and the NA QP held in January a try. You might surprise your self and work them all, thus gaining yourself a WAS certificate. Main thing, get on have some fun and help other hams achieve their goal as well.
