The California QSO Party by WD3P

My effort this year in this, one of the largest state QSO Parties netted only nine QSOs. Was this a failure. Not necessarily, I always look at that in terms of the goals for the event.

I only worked 20 meters. 40 meters may have been useful during the night but I never tried it. I only needed eight counties to have worked all of the California counties a second time. I never heard any of those eight counties. Mostly, however I was interested in working the counties QRP and QRPp. Then there was the goal of working the state at 30 mWatts. Well that goal was never achieved. If 30 mWatts didn't work then I moved to 500 mWatts. Only then did I move to a full 5 Watts.

The strategy then was to only try at 30 mWatts those counties I had already worked at under 1 Watt. Next was only to try to work a county at 500 mWatts if I had it worked it before at 5 Watts. 5 Watts was reserved for those that I had not yet worked QRP.

So what of the nine QSOs? Well one was at a full 5 Watts. The other eight were all at 500 mWatts. On the miles per watt front those eight QSOs all come in near 5,000 miles per watt from my MD QTH. That is about the same as working Australia on 3 Watts.

The standing after the contest then are 50 of the 58 CA counties worked for USA-CA a second time. 40 counties worked QRP and 15 counties worked at under 1 Watt.

It was a fun little contest.