2013 Soapbox Comments

Writeup | New England Scores | Scores from Outside New England | Breakdowns of Top Stations | Soapbox Comments

W/VE Stations Outside New England

AD7P – Got started too late Sunday afternoon. Oh well..

K3TW – It was great to participate, even for just a short time, to say hello to friends in New England.

K3TX – Generally good NE activity for CW though I’m a bit too close to hear on 20m. Stronly recommend all operators ID one per contact.

K4JC – Enjoyed the contest. Wish I could have spent more time participating! Maybe next year…

K4ORD – Only had small amout of time to play,seemed there was a nice turn out for the NE QP. Thanks to all

K4QD – Good to have some time to operate in this one. It was not easy to switch from NEQP to 7QP. Rig: IC-756 & AL-811H. Ant: Compact beam and G5RV.

K6OK – Made a few contacts while working 7QP. I like “triple QSO Saturday,” it’s a lot more fun and interesting to have three going on at the same time than just one.

K0GEO – NEQP is such fun! Thanks for the Q’s and see you in 2014!

K0YQ – Been humming James Taylor all weekend. Thanks to all for the work that goes into making this a great event.

KB3SGY – This is my second contest

KC4YBO – Only on short time this year but was FUN. Thanks to all in New England area

KC8NPL – Had a great time. Looking foward to next year.

KD4CX – Good contest although the bands did not seem to be working with us. Still a great contest and many thanks to those who put this contest on.

KE4KY – Glad to hand KY as a multiplier!

KE6TI – Ran 7W homebrew rig, 2nd day I had it on the air. Missed QRP category by two watts.

KE0G – K3/10 at 5 watts to a 74′ broad-band dipole up about 50′ fed with ladder line and an old Matchbox tuner. Thanks for your great copy of my QRP signal. Enjoyed the contest, and see you next time.

KJ9C/m – 23 Indiana counties activated. Very few NE stations wanted my county.

KK4CIS – Thanks to the organizers and W1 participants!

KK4EHJ – First time submitting a contest log

KK5NA – Only a few this year-but one of my favorite QSO parties.

N2JNE/m – Worked the QSO Party while mobile in Ulster Co., NY

N2WN – K1KI gave me the sweep with GRAVT, thought I was going to miss NANMA but found W1NQT calling CQ briefly and covered that base. WA1Z was the most productive and consistent mobile, with KM3T and K1KI following. Conditions were all over the place but was tickled to finally work some stations on all 5 bands. It was nice to see action on 10. 15 was really good considering. Heard a ton of DX calling NE, but think they were listening to the States. RL3A was loud and hear AH6RE a lot as well.

N3IMU – Saturday night was pretty good, but activity really dried up on Sunday after the other contests ended. Making SSB contacts on only 5W was tough sledding. CW is the way to go for QRP.

N4ARO – Great contest,thanks to mobiles for many multi’s. Only worked one day, but hit it pretty hard and enjoyed it.

N4PN – Thanks once again for the NEQP…This is really as good as it gets – great operators and great condx. Thanks to all the stations that came to the party…and to all who called in and didn’t know there was a party. WA1Z, KM3T, K1KI, NJ1F, KX9X led the mobile parade…

N8XX – Nice New England QSO party. I entered all three QP’s – 7QP, INQP & NEQP. Major effort was neighboring Indiana. Conditions were favorable on 20 from from the start. In the wee hours of Sunday worked a few on 40, a pleasant surprise. Calculated Score using KØRC’s log parser, but it’s just a guess. Thanks to the organizers of this great show! And thanks to all the folks who dug down into the noise to pick up my QRP signal.

N0LD – Enjoyable contest! Thanks for sponsoring it!

ND3R – Great contest as always. Had a lot of fun working it again this year. See you all next year.

NF4A – Thanks to all the mobiles I was able to get a sweep…..NJ1F, K1KI, KM3T, WA1Z, and KX9X all made it possible, Last county for the sweep was Belknap NH thanks to WA1Z and KM3T who both got there within a few minutes of each other!

NX6T/N6KI – Once again the San Diego Contest Club, NX6T, worked 4 simultaneous Contests, NEQP, 7QP, INQP and the ARI. We found band condx to be good on Saturday but really stinko on Sunday for the 2nd half of NEQP. We managed 1 New England QSO on 10 Mtr band the entire weekend, so no propagation from SoCal into New England which really hurt our score. We managed 56 of 67 Sections, which is our best ever, with the missing sections mainly in Vermont and Maine and yet we tried VERYHARD to find the New England Counties Mobile Rovers – K1KI/M, WA1Z/M, KX9X/M, KM3T/M AND N1JEO/M…with an ONE contact with N1MIE/M, but, alas, we just couldn’t find or hear the 11 missing VT ( Missed 7 of 14) and ME ( Missed 4 of 16) stns. This was our best score ever and we know that if we had not been shy of a CW Op for Sunday morning we would have easily broke 25,000 points,…..Next year we plan to be armed for bear and hope to head for the 40K record !

VE2ZA – 50-foot piece of wire thrown on the basement floor after a 10-year ham radio hiatus!

VE3VID – Propagation was sketchy, and outside the weather was 25c and wall-to-wall blue sky.

VE4VT – Great fun as always!

VE5BCS – Thanks for the party conditions were not great here.

VE9AA – Single op + cluster = multi single. Combined 3 QSO parties, so QSO count and scores are just wild guesses,
nowhere’s near to reality. (OK, probably in the ballpark, but not to be used for stats, awards, letters of congrats or yummy pie charts….hi hi. Well, going in I knew this would be a tuff slug as it always is, being right next door. These guys are my neighbors. I installed a cloud burner multiband dipole @ 10′ just in case it would help with the close in guys ….it did in certain cases, but usually the ground planes were best. There was a little relief in the fact of an Es opening Saturday night which put a few guys in the log on 15m and to a lesser extent, 20m that otherwise would’ve been unworkable.

WA1Z/M has amaaaaazing ears. There was only 1 time in all the times he appears in my log (15) which he struggled to copy me. That guy can copy CW !!! 90% of the time he was literally a whisper here and I usually listened to him send his exchange to other guys a few times before I was sure of his cty. Then I’d wait for a peak, then call…..whew !
Ditto KM3T/M, though he was usually farther away and had a louder signal. I can’t forget K1KI/m, KX9X/m, nor the many portables and home stns out there.

I do believe New England was well represented this year. I probably had my best score. Sadly, I didn’t read the fine print until AFTER the contest, and have to submit as a M/S, as I did have the packet turned on this year. For most of the biggie contests, I never use packet, but sometimes for the QSO parties it becomes hard to find guys, so this year I thought I’d try it ….DOH! I made a good number (nearly 100) contacts on 20m , the overwhelming majority of them literally right at the noise level. I am happy to report there are very few alligator stations in New England (though there are still a couple….ARGH) (hi) Cheers from “up here” in NB…

VE9CX – I do enjoy this contest. Keep up the good work.

VY2LI – A few mults from PEI.See you in the Maritime QSO party.

W2BEE – Thanks to the mobiles for new mults!

W2KRD – My first NEQP. Very good and polite bunch of contesters. Can’t wait to get in on next year!!

W2WGK – My favorite QSO (Party) contest.

W4JHC – Thank you. Transmitting with 10W from indoor appt. loop

W4JNC – Thanks for the party.

W8FO/W8IQ – W8FO was a special events station set up at Fort Meigs, Perrysburg, Ohio, for the 200th Anniversary of the Battles of Fort Meigs in the War of 1812.

W8KNO – Weather was great in Ohio and most of my time was spent outside. Did work one new county.

W9QL – Didn’t do quite as well as last year, even though I had a few more multipliers. Would have liked to had more time to operate but still had a lot of fun, as always. Thanks to all the mobiles who always do a good job. Hope to see you next year.

W0GN – Looking for CT and VT on SSB so didn’t work any CW.

WA1FCN – I must say thank you WA1Z. Also N1JEO and KX9X who both seemed to hunt me out. I had more Q’s this year but less counties … 65 last year, only 60 this year. Congrats to Charlie NF4A for a great SO Low Power score. I am glad I went Multiop this year I never would of beat that score ! I seem to switch back and forth from SO to Multiop, this year it was Multiop. Always nice to work guys from back home areas. I was born in SULNH, lived in SULNH HILNH CUMME and 35 plus years in FAICT.

WA6URY – Operated remote from Tokyo

WB5BKL – Had fun. My thanks to all the sharp-eared ops in New England and the organizers!

WB5RYB – Thanks for a fun Sunday afternoon. It rained all afternoon here in Fayetteville, GA and I can’t think of a better way to spend a rainy afternoon than working the New England QSO Party!

WB7TPH – Thanks for the contest! Doesn’t anybody live in Vermont???

WN1GIV/N4BP – Saturday night was XYL’s retirement party after forty five years of teaching high school. So, NEQP was Sunday only this year. Still had fun, but missed a few counties.

WQ6X – During the ARI and 7QP Contests I heard ONE STATION from the NEQP and worked him. NEQP turnout was quite disappointing this year.

DX stations

DF1LX – My second QP ever – 100W from TS850S, 5-ele Tribander fixed to North/North/West – It was fun to catch some for my county award.

EA5/YO9FXD – I have had fun working a little in this test.My best 73s and thanks to all for fb cw dx contacts.

EA6AZ – Thank you to all of you for helping me to complete all counties, needed for US Couty Award.

G4JFS – Good to work some all-time new counties in the contest. Three QSO parties in one weekend was interesting though!

IV3AOL – A fun competition and a good propagation make it enjoyable. 92 QSOs with my QRP rig (FT817, 5W) and a wonderful antenna: the home-build G3TXQ Hex Beam. I missed the 100 QSOs, but next year I’ll do better. 8 QSOs with K1KI/M in different counties – fantastic!

M0CFW – Main activities this weekend is ARI DX and RBN/Packet cluster is connected so this is Multi-Single entry. Heard several other station on 15/20m but no luck..

ON3ND – A real pleasure to sent a small log… 73 to all entrants…

PG2AA – Tnx for the nice event!

S56A – Crazy condx with W7 on 15 m at the middle of the night! Nice to catch rovers.

UA3AGW – Thanks a lot to Tom K1KI for his great effort of organizing NEQP 2013 and to all the participating mobile and fixed operators. It was my best ever NEQP score with over 200 Q’s and 60 CTY’s. Shocked with RL3A (operated by Dima RA9USU) super result, best ever DX score in NEQP. What means great contest set-up and great op ( remember Dima’s ST0R and 7O6T perfect CW pile-up skills?) Since NEQP is one of small number of QSO parties encouraging DX Q’s as mults, I would really appreciate at least mobiles to give periodically a special chance to DX callers in the hours of good propagation. Had a real chance to make a clean sweep from zone 16 but was unable to break through endless US pile-ups on mobiles. Thanks to everyone who replied to my call and cu next year! Dima, UA3AGW ( SOAB DX winner of NEQP 2012)

New England stations

AB1QP – Wrestled with the logging software,limited time, and wierd propagation on 20, and NO Propagation on 10. Still had a blast. Looking forward to next year.

AF1T – I fell asleep Saturday night – the Nearfest tired me out! Conditions on 10 and 15 meters were bad Saturday and even worse Sunday. Hope you enjoyed the contest!

AK1W/K5ZD – Had fun for the limited time I was able to be on.

K1NPT – Ouch! Tough conditions.

K1PQS – Again this year, because of other obligations, I wasn’t even sure if I’d get here in time on Sunday to operate at all.

K1QO – Wish I could have helped the mobiles out more but I wasn’t able to hear them in many of the counties. This is such a fun contest!!!! Many many thanks to K1KI (who I tried to hear but wasn’t able to follow in some of the cool remote counties in VT) for doing great work and keeping this contest so much fun. Hope to do a /m next year. Thanks to all those great folks who put up with me when I called CQ… I’m not the greatest op but I’m doing better.

K1RK/WA1GPO – Thanks again for a great activity. Unfortunately for NEQP the weather was good which limited my operating!

K1ZK – Only had a few hours to operate, but had a great time! Had to QRT early for a birthday dinner on Sunday, and saw K1KI/M on Route 7 as we drove to Burlington.

KB1KMF – great time as usual in the NEQP! Didn’t have much time, but made a lot of contacts when I did.

KB1TAC – First Contest ever… One contact is still one contact!

KB1VIB – Was a great contest again – as always. I have the most fun in this contest and wait for it all year.

KB1VWQ – A huge thanks to the NEQP staff for all their post QP efforts in sorting out the results. This was only my 2nd NEQP, and had another great time. (I did pass last year’s score anyway.) I worked as SoLP again, and it was a rough time for the morning of Sunday (5/5). It did level off into the afternoon. I am glad I stuck it out, and hung in there. (all the while looking out the one window in my shack into a wonderful sunny New England Day. Perhaps we lost some operators over that… I shall always look forward to the NEQP and shall be back next year to try and beat my score. Thanks and 73 to all stations that came back to my call. (Yaesu FT-847, 100w, with a G5RV located aprox. 50 feet. QSO’s logged via the N3JFP program.

KD1XH – First NEQP with multi-band dipole. Much easier to change bands and make more contacts. Made more CW Q’s than previous years even though I’m still not too good at it. Had fun as always although bands were not any good for me on Sunday.

KM3T/m – This obviously takes more planning – very impromptu operation and all sending by hand. I’ll never do that again! Great activity! Rig: Icom IC-7000 100w Antennas: Hamsticks (one at a time) Logging: SkookumLogger (Mac)Driver: Kelly (YL) – boy do I owe her now. Sending: Almost all by hand. Been >20 years since I did that for this many hours. On day 2 I programmed the IC-7000 M1 to at least CQ. I would have done that on day one but those MA counties go by fast.

Wow, that was fun – for some value of fun.

Last-minute decision to go do a little NEQP expedition. I knew WA1Z and K1KI were going north so I decided to head south with a very minimal plan and then work back toward home. Basically did a big loop from home in HILNH down toward Boston from the north, then along the coast of MA to just about Cape Cod and then west toward RI/CT. Then north and east through CT and back north into MA/NH. Stopped at home for a break then went to do MERNH and BELNH because NF4A needed BELNH for a sweep. He will buy me a beer in Dayton I think. Little did I know that WA1Z was approaching BELNH from the north at the same time I was approaching from the south. Totally randomly we were about 1 mile from each other at the same time. Only second time I ever heard/worked him all weekend!
Hats off to all the out of state ops in this one – they were there religiously for every county change. DX stations had really decent signals – best DX was UA0WW on 15m late Sunday morning. RL3A was loud and even worked me on 40m!

It’s easy to get sucked into this contest. Only regret is not staying up Saturday night to work a few more hours! Also regret not trying 15m more- next year will plan to have my K3 and two hamsticks or the IC-7000 and a multiband mobile antenna.

Hats off to WA1Z/m – Bob is an amazing op and really knows how to play this one! We decided next year we’re gonna really go head to head – winner gets a bottle of fine wine. My only issue is convincing my driver to do this again. And sincere thanks to Tom K1KI for organizing a great event year after year!

N1ABY – Started out slow, but not too bad overall. Wrkd more counties than ever before!

N1AIA – Just 90 minutes and 1 band this year, but had a good time.

N1BYT – This was my first NE QSO Party. It was great fun! I’ll be back next year, hopefully with some more time to operate!

N1DC – Thanks to Tom K1KI and the entire crew for another fun NEQP. I had very limited hours this year due to family commitments. I was unable to repeat my 2012 NE and MA win in the low power category. Missed almost all of Friday. Conditions were not great Sunday AM at my QTH and I had trouble getting anything going. After getting frustrated on 20 CW, I decided to try 15M CW with the antenna pointed at EU. I worked a bunch of west coast USA stations at S8/9 that I couldn’t here with the antenna pointed west including AH6RE. Very strange.

EU DX was weak for the most part except for RL3A who was S9+. I tried desperately to pull a DX QRP station out of the noise, but never completed the QSO…sorry OM! I did go to 10M multiple times hoping for an opening but no luck. I did put a few phone QSO’s in the log, but had reports of 4-5 stations nearby or on top of my frequency on 20. Couldn’t find a clear freq. With more hours I would have been on 40/75 Friday PM…maybe next year. I like CW a lot better than phone !!! Thanks for all the QSO’s and many multiple band contacts. Station: TenTec Omni 7 100W, 4 element tribander @30 ft, 80/40 dipoles @35 ft

N1NN – 6th New England QSO Party

N1VVV – Really fun contest. Don’t know why this was the first year I did it but I will be back next year. A little surprised at the lack of dx stations but more surprised I missed working Texas.

NE1QP/NJ1F – A great big thank you to Dave K1TTT for the use of his super station!!

NF1L – Can’t work what you cna’t hear

NZ1MT – Back for my second New England QSO Party and hoping to keep the QRP record for Hampden County, MA. The weather at my QTH was absolutely perfect this weekend, a little cool on Sunday morning but a deep blue clear sky with bright sunshine all day. Far to nice a day to be inside the shack so once again operated backyard portable from the patio table. I was using the trusty FT-817ND running on solar power and fed from a LNR Par EndFedz EFT-10/20/40 trail friendly antenna strung up in the trees. Thanks to all who pulled out my weak QRP signal. See you all again next year!

W1DWA – Had a great time despote KB1W one block away running QRO with a 75′ tower and Steppr beam.

W1EBI – Put in four hours Saturday night and this morning. Fun using N1MM and logging QSO’s from stations in 7QP and INQP without a hiccup. Quite a few DX stations were playing. Got a surprise call from 4J6RO. Amused to get two Q’s in a row from AG6V, then AG3V. Hope the roving mobilers had fun.

W1ECH – Surprised at how many DX stations called!

W1END – Great activity but with abysmal conditions on Sunday. Rig was FTdx5000 (150w) and Butternut HF6V all-band vertical.

W1JQ – Thanks–operated a little more than I thought I would. Activity seemed to be down, though I made a lot of QSOs fairly quickly. Fun contest as always…

W1KBN/NI1L – Some time ago Chuck W1HIS and I came up with the idea of activating a rare or semi-rare county in this year’s NEQP. Suffolk county appears to be usually underrepresented in NEQP and since until recently I was a graduate student at making a “dxpedition” to the Northeastern’s Radio Club W1KBN seemed like a great idea. The problem was ­ I’d never actually been there. I knew the club was there, saw the antenna on the roof but since in the past several years I worked individually with my advisor I rarely ever ventured to the campus and never really had the opportunity to see the club and meet the people.

A few weeks ago I shot an email to N1QD who worked from there last year but didn’t get a response (my message ended up in a spam box) and didn’t really followed up on that until a week before the contest when Chuck started asking me difficult questions. Anyway ­ somehow got ahold of Joe N1QD who, turns out, graduated and left the club but he referred me to Dave K1MBO who is a faculty advisor of the club. I stopped by his office on Tuesday morning and he showed me the station made the club available for us for the contest. The club has at the moment two antennas ­ a tribander and a random wire. Chuck and I decided to bring out own radios as the club’s TenTec was reported to have some unspecified problems with the narrow CW filter. We were lucky to secure a triplexer and bandpass filters on short notice so the idea was to work two higher bands on the same antenna during the day. As neither of use has an amplifier that would be considered “portable” we decided to go low power. We met on the campus around 10am on Saturday morning, hauled our stuff up to the fifth floor of Hayden Hall where the clubhouse is and the fun began. We quickly assembled two operating positions.

We connected the triplexer and I connected my radio to 15m port through a bandpass filter. I used the built-in tuner to match the antenna and everything seemed to be fine until I started to transmit. I immediately noticed that the tuner would not rest when I was transmitting ­ iit would randomly try to match and re-match the antenna. After turning the tuner off and putting low-power steady carrier on just by observing the behavior of SWR meter in the rig it became obvious that the tribander has a bad connection in one of it’s elements. That was later confirmed by Chuck’s SWR scan of the tribander using a vector analyzer. The prospects looked grim ­ 10m and 15m were unusable with the autotuner on and had SWR high enough without a tuner that the radio was reducing the output power to 30W. Fortunately I was able to use an external tuner that was in the club to find a position on 15m in which regardless of the beam element’s contact the SWR presented to the radio was approx 1.5, which my radio seemed to tolerate without any significant power reduction. We had no such luck with 10m but since 10m never really opened it wasn’t a big issue. The random wire antenna was thought to be usable on low bands. It was actually marginal on 40m ­ we were able to load it with an external tuner but SWR of the antenna itself was very high so most of the power seemed to go to make the coax warm. No luck with 80m ­ we couldn’t find a match using two different external tuners so we had to forgo 80m operation. Despite the antenna troubles we had a ton of fun operating and we made more than 700 QSOs.

W1KBN seems to have a good location with relatively tame noise level for the center of big city (admittedly ­ during a weekend, not sure how worse it is on weekdays). Chuck and I offered our help with any club projects and fixing the tribander and replacing the random wire with something that works on low bands seem to be top two priorities. I’m sure that was not the last time W1KBN is heard in a contest. We would like to once again thank Dave K1MBO for his support and for making the club station available to us for the contest.

W1QI/W1QK – Thanks for sponsoring the event, it was fun operating from Litchfield and Fairfield counties again this year. Pretty decent activity on CW as well.

W1SFR – Thanks for a great QSO party! I got my general this year, so I was able to cover a lot more ground although 40m was still a big part of my activity.

W1TR – Had a relaxing Sat Evening and Sunday Morning on ALL HF Bands both CW and Phone! Mostly tried to work as many New England counties as I could !

W1WIU – Another great fun weekend. 20 & 40 meters were the workhorse bands, with some activity on 15. Thanks to the organizers for another great year.Hpe to see you all again next year.

WA1Z/m – Thanks to everyone who called in this weekend. There were literally dozens of repeat callers from the Canadian Maritimes to California. That really makes county changes so much fun in those first few minutes. Thank you to all and I hope all the NEQP activity kept things interesting on your end! Top QSO total goes to N2WN with 45, followed by N4PN (40), W0EA (31), and NF4A (30).Also had a dedicated group of repeat DX callers: The most being RL3A with 24, followed by UA3AGW (17), OK2EC (15), SP1AEN (13), AH6RE and EA6AZ (5), DK3BN, UA6LCN and SM5CSS (4), PA0LOU and PA3AAV (3) and more. Thanks again to Tom, K1KI, for organizing another great NEQP!

Station – Radio: Elecraft K3, 100 watts. Antennas: Hustler monoband resonators 80-10. Resonators mounted on Hustler MO-2 masts. Two antenna mounts available on the rear hatch. Logging: Computer logging on laptop powered by combination of internal batteries and sealed jump-start batteries.

From an implementation point of view, this was a carbon copy of last year’s effort. Kurt, W6PH, and I joined forces again with Kurt doing the driving while I operated. I sat in the passenger side back seat with the K3 and Win-Keyer set up on a small table to my left. I used a lap desk to hold the laptop and paddle. With the right amount of pressure against the desk or car door, I managed to keep things stable enough to operate as we traveled through the winding back roads of Maine.

Two Comet antenna mounts are installed on the back of the car for quick switching between two bands. These are trunk-lip mounts that are not designed to be used with the medium-duty MO-2 masts. To make the antennas very secure, I constructed a harness made from PVC sections that extends from the car’s roof rack for added stability. Once again, Kurt kept us on schedule in our trek through 22 total counties involving 32 county changes.
Conditions and activity were fantastic. It was nice to have 15 Meters as another option to keep the rate up, especially in Maine’s larger northern counties. I got a couple requests to move to 10 Meters. I moved as soon as we could pull over safely, but found no activity each time.

One of the many highlights of the weekend was getting called by JA4DND and JO7WXN on 15 Meters Saturday afternoon. When we were still looking for OK and MS on Sunday afternoon, Kurt kept crossing his fingers when every W5 called. Lots of thumbs-up signs were exchanged between the front and back seat as multipliers called in, especially in the last hours of the contest on Sunday when YU2A, VE7CV, K5FA (MS), XE1/AA0AA, and TF3Y called in.
NEQP always seems to have a nice activity increase on Sunday afternoon and this year was no different. Combined with the fact that Belknap NH was still needed by many of the NEQP Deserving, the final two hours produced QSO rates of 107 and 123! Funny to hear later that KM3T/Kelly and WA1Z/W6PH were on a “collision course” of sorts, racing to BELNH! Glad we were both able to get a couple sweeps out of it for folks. The multiplier breakdown is 52 State/Prov and 35 DX mults. 487 unique callsigns were worked this weekend.

WB1DJU – This was the first time in a long time that the Wireless Operators of Winsted operated under the club call sign. It was also a chance to try operating three contests at the same time. Our last QSO was made by Pete, KB1PCK, when he contacted RL3A. Not only was it a multiplier for us, it was Pete’s first DX contact. We are looking forward to next year’s contest.

WN1E – Had a good time operating this years NEQP. I spent a lot of time in the cw mode and improved upon last years score. Looking forward to next years contest.