State QSO parties are great opportunities for ham radio operators to get on the air and make plenty of contacts that can vary from light ragchewing to serious contesting contacts. One of the advantages of a state QSO party is that in general the exchange part of a contact is the County rather than some other complicated set of letters and/or numbers.
The New York QSO Party was held last Saturday October 18th from 10AM to 10PM. I had intended to get on right around the start and operate thru most of the day as I had plans in the evening. Unfortunately I had to run errands that delayed my start until noon. Once I had setup my computer I went about looking for stations that were participating. I was able to work plenty of stations, but I also heard more stations than I worked. I learned that because I live in a populous county I should have spent most of my time holding a frequency and calling CQ rather than spending all my time hunting for stations. You can see below my score summary:
Band Mode QSOs Pts Mul Mt2
3.5 LSB 1 1 0 0
7 LSB 28 27 22 2
7 USB 4 3 2 0
14 LSB 1 0 0 0
21 USB 1 1 0 0
28 USB 1 1 0 0
50 USB 1 1 0 0
144 USB 1 1 0 0
420 USB 3 3 2 0
Total Both 41 38 26 2
Score : 1,064
