Writeup | New England Scores | Scores Outside New England | Breakdowns of Top Stations | Soapbox Comments
W/VE Stations Outside New England
AA4TI – Always a lot of activity for the NEQP. There were a lot of mobiles also. Great QSO Party.
AC2YD – All QRP CW … thanks for good ears/antennas! Great representation of counties across New England; I worked 50 of them in my 115 Qs! Thanks for being there!
AC9XS – I was able to return home early from a business trip so I wouldn’t miss the contest. Had some issues where my impromptu vertical mast collapsed a few times which made sending out a signal impossible. Much better once that was resolved for good near the end of the day. Given I live in an apartment complex, I’ll take these results. Good time, and hope to do it again next year. Thanks all! 73
AI6DO – Was really only playing in the 7th Call Area QSO Party and mostly stayed on 40 meters, so heard little from W1. Hoping the QSOs with two ME stations will get me to one remaining state away from completing 40 meters WAS. KX3/KXPA100, 40 meter dipole.
K2MN – Used two indoor fan dipoles and 80 Watts.
K3PAX – We entered to have some fun and that we did. Conditions were quiet onn 15 thru 40, but 80 was noisy. All equipment functioned correctly, the food was excellent and we all had a great time. Thanks to the sponsors of each great QSO party.
K3TW – Many thanks for another very enjoyable New England QSO Party!
K4BAI – Good activity from New England. The mobiles did a fantastic job 15M was very marginal with just a few QSOs on that band. Lot of QRN on the low bands. Thanks for the fun and QSOs.
K7DR – 40 and 20 were in good shape both days to 1-land from Mich. Did about the same as last year.
K7ZX – Portable at the Silver Surf Motel, Yachats, Oregon. We had a doozy of a solar disturbance earlier in the day! Thankfully, the bands perked up nicely later on, too bad I had to work with a compromise antenna. I missed being able to work effectively on 80 meters.
K8LF – Love the combined Log, Could only operate Saturday.
K9UIY – Great activity with all 67 New England counties scheduled to be active. Special thanks to all for making the effort. Super job for all the county activations by the mobiles! Condx were fairly good from here in Nine Land, but rough to be running QRP. Lots of great ears out there … many thanks for being able to pull out my signals. Ten meters I thought was available, but I could only get Pete W1RM to move to that band … we made the Q … W1RM was S9 plus 15 dB!! Thanks for my one QSO on 28mHz, Pete! Looking forward to doing it all again next year.
KA3TTT – I always enjoy the New England QSO Party. I can work a lot of what I hear. I used my own logging software, and worked on the contest functions as I played. With a bit of luck by next year I will have moved to the suburbs and will run more power. See you next year!
KA6BIM – Remote operation in spare while visiting family. No Audio so copied CW visually off of waterfall. Sorry for latency and qlf’s. Tnx for qso’s
KB4CG – Always a pleasure to participate in the NE QP despite being constrained to 40 and 80 due to propagation constraints. Good activity.
KC4TEO – Enjoyed the contest but regret not having more time to play. Thanks for putting this on every year!
KD2KW – Thanks for the practice.
KE0TT – K3 driving a HB amp to 100 watts out and wire antennas. Thanks for the fun!
KF3G – Thank you for the 2023 New England QSO Party
KG9X – Nice to be able to use only 1 log in N1MM for all the QP’s going on and then use the parser but the details of band and time aren’t gonna happen!
KJ9C/m – Not trying to win this one, just put a few more counties on. Bad roads, bad line noise, and a few visits from Mr Murphy. This one was TONS of fun!…. note to NEQP: Please wait for us to finish sending our ENTIRE exchange (not just the “IN” part) before you send “TU QRZ”. It’s downright rude, even if you are not planning to enter INQP.
KS2G – From my QTH on Long Island, NY this is always just a two band contest — 40 and 80 just a few hours late afternoon and evening. Daytime on 20, 15 and 10, New England states are two far away for ground wave, and to close for skip.
N2NF – First time in NEQP, very nice activity made for a lot of fun. 40 and 80m most productive from here (NY), no surprise. The two time block partitioning seems to work well.
N3XF – What a grind! Conditions were really poor from PA to New England on every band except 40. Thanks to all the mobiles for their efforts. Without them, it would have been a boring contest from here!
N5RZ – Got on when I could between other commitments. Checked 10M several times but NADA. Thanks to all for the QSOs.
N6GP – Good to see 15 being used so much this year. Too bad the condix were bad for 10m.
Lots of activity, and a lot of fun.
N6KI – Remote Operation from KN6NBT station to test site for a few QSOs
N7AME – We could not hear anything before 2200 UTC from mid and east coast.
N7MZW – IC-7300,Heil ProMicro Headset,Vectronics HFT-1500 Tuner for 75 Meters only, and a ZS6BKW up 50 feet, running N-S at 6,053 feet elevation. What a slog that was! Not a soul heard on 10 or 15,noisy bands, and recent Solar Storms,just to keep things interesting. 73 to all! November Seven Many Zebras Walking.
N7WY – 3 times communication between N1MM and my K3S went south in excess of 40 minutes
N8II – This was almost the weekend that wasn’t for me. I had dental surgery Thursday PM and was in horrible pain Friday morning. It rapidly improved Friday evening, but I woke up Saturday feeling washed out. As the day progressed, a bit of discomfort turned into real pain by evening. I was tired in the 24Z hour, took a short break at 01Z and felt more energetic but still hurting.
I could only ask for better conditions and more activity on 80M; both home station and mobile activity did not disappoint. There was no Es “magic” at any time during the NEQP this year which lead to a long opening to ME and the rest of New England skipping over me for most all of Saturday and Sunday. At the best moment Sunday in 14Z hour stations in north VT/NH, RI and EMA were at the edge of the skip zone enough that I could get through. The rest of the day was tough scatter QSO’s. 40M was the money band for sure, 75M phone a wasteland at least until my quitting time of 0239Z. 40 was open well from the start (sparse activity first 30-40 minutes) until bed time. At 02Z the 7’s outnumbered the 1’s left on 40M CW. I put 7QP on the sidelines in order to focus on IN and NEQP. It was easy to work a few 7’s on 40 as I searched for the W1/IN ops.
Sunday was okay, but I could have worked so many more NEQP ops on 20 if I lived only 150 miles farther away. The western CT border is probably only about 250 miles away. 40M was sparsely occupied at 13Z and by 15Z until 1830Z nearly devoid of 1’s. Part of the problem was some loud QRN from storms all morning which I expected to get worse. Most of the storms dissipated in the afternoon and the ones close in VA were the 40M skip zone. Luckily mobiles K2UA, W1VE, and NZ1U were far enough away to work for several hours on 20 CW. 40 never closed Sunday, good signals by 1930Z until the end thanks to a relatively low MUF.
Speaking of the the mobiles, there were more than expected. I didn’t connect well with W1DX. I felt a special connection with NZ1U as they worked their way through all of the counties of ME. The first time a I called, he seemed to not sort out my call well. After that we were locked in and several Q’s were made at my noise level easily. Thanks so much, would have missed several ME counties without the mobiles! Gerry, W1VE seemed easier to find Sunday, easy to work as well. Thanks to K2UA for a lot of VT counties I would have missed otherwise and some rare NH as well. Those 5 letter x 2 county lines are no fun to copy. I found Mitch operating W1NVT/M in Grand Isle, VT on 40 phone and mentioned that I needed Chittenden where he lives for the VT sweep, no offer to help due to busy portable/mobile operating. But my next QSO was Dave, KM3T/M on 40 CW in CHI for the sweep! Later the Chittenden ops came out of the woodwork working AA1SU twice and KC1SFJ. Thanks to Dave for several other Q’s, very easy to work. I caught K1JB/M once; he was at home Saturday and booming as usual.
I had 2 ops from Nantucket, MA call 2 QSO’s apart on 40 phone Sunday; they live about a mile apart. I was not so lucky with Dukes, never heard one. FYI, I used very little spotting. No spots lead to a mult. So, I worked my 66 out of 67 with my own skills.
Thanks for a fun QP, most ops were very proficient. The casual guys on 40 SSB always gave their county when quizzed and I helped a few out with the proper abbreviation. Don’t forget we still have a 500 KHz allocation starting at 3.5MHz, Hi!
N8KH – Could not work many stations cuz of QRM from my neighbor’s Generac solar system. Don’t get a Generac solar system.
N9TF – Mostly a Saturday operation. Popped on for a few more Qs Sunday afternoon until a thunderstorm passed by and then pulled the plug and called in a contest. 80m was a challenge Saturday night with high static noise from thunderstorms. 20m Sunday afternoon was as bad! Thanks for the Qs es 73!
NE8P – Didn’t score quite as well this year as last, due mostly to poor upper band conditions this year I believe. Enjoyed it none the less! Thanks to all who participated! TS-590SG, SB-221, 20/15/10 rotatable dipole @ 32 ft, Ground mounted 80/40 vertical
NF4A – I have to work on Sunday so only a very limited effort….only 2.1 hours. 15 and 10 meters which are usually great from here in the NEQP were completely dead here.
NN6U/m – Operated mobile from my Jeep on Saturday, doing 2 POTA activations. Kept my antenna in “mobile legal” configuration (CalTrans max vehicle height and no radials) since I was entering 7QP and INQP in the Mobile category. That might have limited my reach, but I was able to work almost everyone I could hear over the noise floor. I was hoping 10m or 15m might have been open, but was only able to hear NewE from CA on 20m, plus one 40m QSO after sunset.
NO2D – QSB all weekend. Tried QRP at the beginning. I was not being heard. So reluctantly went to LOW category and raised power to 80 watts. At least I was heard. Thanks to those who make these QSO Parties possible.
NS2N – Score created from IN7QPNE parsing tool Good activity : best band 40m using 80m sloper and a warm transmatch. Lots of good ears on weak short skip 20m & 15m
NU6N – Marginal conditions, great fun! I had to turn on an amp mid party.
VA2NW – aiming for the lowest score possible.
VA4JP – This sounded like a 6M contest from back in the day, and not in a good way. Nothing heard on 10 and only worked K1ZZ on 15. Thanks to Gerry, W1VE, for 4 Qs and 3 mults!
VA6RCN – Just a guess at the score as I used N1MM’s IN7QPE program that logs 4 qso parties at once. Will let score keepers figure this one out. Just wanted to hand out some Alberta mults in case no one else was on from here. Good luck everyone.
VE3DQN – Love the New England QSO party. Always so much activity on the bands.
VE6TL – Tough breaking the midwest and east coast walls with marginal prop.
VE7BGP – I had a lot of fun operating these qso parties. I christened my Hi Mound bug I bought at a recent hamfest.
W0BH – Good conditions and lots of ops to work during the times I was on, and I got more mults in less time than last year. 4 QSO parties in one weekend is great fun! Thanks for the Qs ..
W1RO – Worked 3 QSO parties at the same time.
W2ECK – NE QSO plus others.
W2LC – Interesting working 4 QSO parties at once. I cannot work much NE from here on 20m and above, too close, except for ME. There must have been a solar flare sometimes conditions were really bad. Nice to work everyone!
W2LCQ – Used BeLoud station in Calais, Washington County, Maine. On the southeast coast of Maine , near the ocean. All worked well except occasionally hit F5 key which closed the radio when focus was on the radio. Restored by shutting BeLoud and N1MM+ down and restarted them. Ran the whole time. worked lots of EU and an HZ1 Saudi Arabia.
W8MET – Search and pounce only…..could only put in so many hours for this contest……..
W9ILY – Optibeam OB9/5 at 55 feet and rotating dipole for 40M
W9RE – Good fun and good activity. Thanks as always to the sponsors. Sunday only. Super loud signals on 20 most of the day. Pretty good activity. Only encountered a couple county line stations, that I didn’t work. I was at W9VW for the INQP on Saturday. Thanks for the fun activity on a sleepy Sunday.
W9TCV – Sorry I couldn’t make it up to Newport this year! Glad to make contact with all of the states again, though certainly not all the counties in New England. Happy to make some contacts in the 7QP and INQP as well. Thanks to all who participated and 73
WA1FCN – Nothing serious happening here in Dixie this year. Just cruising through the airwaves enjoying the New England scenery. Glad I was here for one more NEQP. 73 and Good Morning from Alabama.
WA2JQK – With the A-index at 30, no copy on any band except 40 and 80.
WA6KHK – Lots of good rovers in New England. Special thanks to W1VE and K2UA for all the county multipliers! Hectic doing NEQP and 7QP on same weekend!
WF4V – My first NEQP. Squeezed in a few hours on a busy weekend. Fantastic ops!
WN4AFP – I found 62 out of 67 mults, so that was a pretty good contest. Thanks to all for the Q and especially the mobile ops… K2UA, W1DX, W1VE, KM3T, K1JB, K5ZD, N1V and NZ1U.
WQ6X – This was the 1st WQ6X Cinco de contest operation running QRP. Having access to KN6NBT’s “Cliffside” location on top of the mountain in Ramona made QRP operation a reality. Many stations had trouble believing I was really a QRP station. Having access to a 3-el Stepp-IR, a 2-el Shorty-40 and a double-Bazooka on 80 (all at 50 feet) allowed me to point the antennas giving the 5-watt signal just enough oomph to be heard domestically, altho numerous DX calls were also received on the high bands. Internet dropouts probably accounted for my voice sounding choppy sometimes. The BiG problem came Sunday afternoon when most of the NEQP stations moved down to 40-meters, which does us NO GOOD on the left coast. We see the SPOTs and WEEP. C’mon Guys, give us a break. I was surprised by the smaller (than expected) turnout from California. Nevertheless, I always submit a log for EVERY contest, just in case other W6 stations don’t. You can real all about this GiG soon at: http://WQ6X.Blogspot.com
WV4P – Tuff Conditions and my 80m antennas are getting some modifications so lost an entire band. Deep QSB made for more than a few started Q’s that just went away. Always fun chasing the mobiles.
DX Stations
DL3DXX – Despite the poor propagation New England was not so much affected by solar disturbances as 7QP or INQP. I only had time on Saturday. Worked all I was able to hear. Run out of stations after sunrise, so went QRT
F6EPO – Any points more error on my log computer do not exchange country. Nice condistions mobile on 21 MHz. Meet you soon 2024.
OM2VL – Excellent activity. Thanks for the organizing again excellent QP! My big thanks to every mobile who was QRV also on 20/15m when 40m was closed here. I was so busy with many W1’s on all bands, not many time to try some SSB RUN and when I try it, not many stations back to my call as last year. Missed counties: VT – ESS (I heard K2UA/M on 20m and called immediately, but he went QSY on 80m) MA – DUK I never heard
Most QSOs with: Mobiles – W1VE 41/29 K2UA 31/20 KM3T 21/11 NZ1U 20/17 W1DX 13/12 N1V 11/6 W1NVT 7/3 K1JB 6/4 K1NZ 3/3 Fixed – (6): NC1CC, W1GD (5): K1BX, K1RX, K1VUT, K1ZE, KE1VT, N1BUG, NA1NA, NE1QP, W1QK (4): 24x
MA – 165, NH -85, CT – 72, VT -75, ME – 74, RI -42
New England Stations
AB1XW – At my base station, I worked a few QSOs while tinkering with my home logging setup on Saturday evening.
AB1XW/p – I’m submitting two logs; this is the one for my portable station. With the weather forecast looking uncharacteristically gorgeous for this year’s NEQP, I scrambled to pull off something I’ve been hoping to do for a few years now: a QRP portable/mobile entry. The rules define that category, but nobody has ever entered it. Unless someone else did the same thing this year and also operated from HARCT, this entry should establish a new, and I expect easily broken, record.
Since I didn’t decide to try this until the last minute, I was completely unprepared. The result was a very small-scale operation, but a huge amount of learning. After discovering that my old Weber Tribander now only transmits on 40m, I reverted to my only other portable QRP rig, a 3-band KD1JV “Mountain Topper” I built a few years ago as a beta tester. The MTR is a wonderful little special-purpose transceiver. Unfortunately, its special purpose is ultralight SOTA activations, not contesting.
With the rig figured out, I sorted through my portable antenna options and started testing different configurations. That yielded a bunch of useful data, but no contacts by dinnertime. Following a nice meal with my wife and daughter, I retreated to the basement ham shack and tinkered with my home contesting setup. That also needed some work, updates, and reconfiguration; as I was doing those things I also completed a handful of QSOs. I’ve submitted those in my other log, for the sake of the folks I worked.
Sunday, with my portable setup finally looking usable, I headed out to Windsor Locks Canal State Park in Somers, Connecticut. My wife went for a run on the canal trail while I set up a POTA-style operation
under a convenient antenna tree. The MTR was feeding a manual BLT tuner with a pair of 33-foot speaker wires attached, one up the tree and the other laid out on the ground as a counterpoise.
20 meters didn’t sound very active, so I found an open frequency on the only other contest band available to me, 40 meters. This is usually a two-band contest anyway, so that was fine. 30 minutes of
CQing yielded 11 QSOs with stations scattered around the northeast, plus one Canadian. Not bad for a whopping 3 watts and an improvised antenna. I didn’t even try to do S&P, as scanning the band on the MTR isn’t practical. It’s a run rig.
Now that I’ve pioneered this category, I’m anxious to do more with it, and would love to see other folks take it up as well. Tom’s going to have to add a whole new column to the results and records tables, with a whole bunch of empty records waiting to be set. There’s plenty of room for me to improve my setup, too. Consider this a challenge.
AE1P – I f you’re expecting glorious raves of the wonderful condx’s this weekend…sorry to disappoint….I thought they stunk…many stations way down in the noise. Only high-lite was working a DX pileup on 15m Sunday afternoon on an otherwise dead band to the USA… Regardless, had fun, and as always, thank Tom, K1KI for his organization of this great QSO party…
AE1T – Best score ever. And, condx not great.
AF1T – Too bad 15 and 10 Meters were poor. Most of my activity was on 20 Meters.
AI1TT(W1WBB) – 100w to 5-band (10m-20m) Hexbeam at 32 ft; 88′ doublet and corner-fed apex-up
Delta Loop on 40m; 80m dipole (horiz L, ends up at 50′). Mostly ‘Run’ QSOs with
brief band sweeps after callers dried up. A few hours at start and end of Day 1; final 3 hours on Day 2. Spent a few hours Saturday eve as Op at NC1CC…TNX Don! TNX to all who called in! Disturbed solar conditions much of Saturday so fewer DX mults for all. But no thunderstorm QRN around as it was sunny and quite warm all weekend in southern New England. A P/T effort for points to our club.
AK1MD – First time cw running in a contest.
AK1W/K5ZD – Conditions were awful No, worse than that.
K1BX – Tribander was stuck NE until Sunday afternoon – when I coaxed it over to NW. I cranked the tower over 30 degrees and released the brake. It whipped around 90 degrees, but the motor is dead, so NW was going to be close enough. Worked several PNW stations ! 40 and 80 were good late Sunday afternoon, but the weather was way too nice to stay inside. Always a good activity level especially on CW.
K1CHR/AE1P – Tough Condx’s… Had fun with County ARES Call
K1GQ – SkookumLogger; K4 + KPA1500; 12-el tribander, 2-el 40, wires, all about 60ft up; W1FV 9-circle RX array.
K1JB – Put in about 6 hours at home on Saturday using a KW and a 3 element yagi at 95′. Then put in about 1.6 hrs operating stationary mobile (and a total of about 6 hrs on the road) in three counties on Sunday with 100 watts and a 20M ham stick on a mag mount on the roof of my SUV. Guess which one was more effective? Conditions Saturday seemed to be OK, but there wasn’t much DX. I ran 100% and had 49 states call in (ND was the exception). I expected the rate to be lower operating mobile on Sunday, but at times it seemed totally anemic. Signals were mostly decent, and I worked a few EU and a few CA, but I guess I was hoping for pileups like those that were generated by the in-state mobiles during the FL QSO Party last weekend. However, I didn’t know that conditions had deteriorated on Sunday, so in retrospect I didn’t do so badly. I made a few tactical errors, but overall, the mobile operations went well, and it was fun to get out on a nice day AND operate a contest. I believe I’ll stay at home for the next few contests, though.
K1KI – Had a good start but too many other things going on on such a nice weekend.
K1MAZ – With early bad band conditions at my QTH, later the conditions greatly improved. Not as much as I got in previous years, but just right for me! Great to be part of this! Look forward to it each year.
K1NZ/m – My friend Matt and I decided to do a repeat of last year’s NEQP rover and brewery excursion again this year. Unfortunately, we lucked into an exclusive Hill Farmstead curated tasting on Friday (my goodness, Ann is such a wonderfully exquisite beer) which made our NEQP route a bit of a mess. There was a lot of driving to hit a few out-of-the-way county lines which also affected the number of breweries we could visit. Conditions weren’t the greatest but having CW capability this year made a difference. All in all, it was still a fun trip and we’ll probably do it again next year! 2018 Camry, FT-100D, and ATAS-120. 167 QSOs / 11,210 points / 12 counties / 11 breweries. Results should be released as soon as adjudication is completed [they are – K1KI]. Exchanges should be reversed into STCTY format to match other concurrent QSO parties. Self-spotting should be allowed in order to increase SSB participation.
K2RB – Did QRP from home Saturday. Interesting. Ran 100 percent, When QRP all stations that called were very readable. No digging stations out of the noise. The GBARC club tried to activate Sunday at Hoydon Hill location, but conditions were so bad that I didn’t work one station. QRP didn’t work effectively in contest type operation. No QRP for field day. It was fun hanging out on such a beautiful day and I discovered my own computer issues for future pota activations.
K1RO – Thought I would try something different this time. Got on a little bit here and there throughout the weekend. Activity sounded okay, but tough conditions for QRP.
K1RX – Tried to gather local members of club to multi op but nil. So part time for me. Fun as usual.
K1TR – 2 x K3/P3, A3S + dipoles. Went into this one hoping for decent propagation on the high bands, like we had last year, but it was not to be. Still had a great time connecting with the many familiar calls and several new ones!
K1TTW/m – Hope you had a great weekend. Weather was great in Northern VT, but the band conditions (weak signals and high noise level) didn’t allow me to make more contacts than last year, in fact I may be down 40% from last year, but almost the same number of multipliers
K1VWQ – This year was fun, But a complete bust. Had to work both days, and got pretty sick with allergies or a 24 hour bug. Went to work, came home and slept. Oh well. Thanks to NEQP staff for pulling off another wonderful NEQP.
K1WDY – My antenna was damaged within a few weeks of the contest starting. I did my best to tune the random length wire I had remaining and get a few contacts. Hopefully next year things will go better.
K1XM – I had several other things going on this weekend and my 80 meter antenna is still broken. 10 and 15 were, to be charitable, disappointing. But it was fun to get on the air.
K1ZZ – Saturday night the 80 meter 4square wouldn’t switch to either SW or NW. Fixed it during the day Sunday. The last hour on 80 was much better!
K2LE – Remote from home QTH in NY = station in Vermont. Internet connection in/out.
K2UA/m – Rig: TS-480HX with SGC500 amplifier to a Tarheel 200A-HP antenna in a receiver mount. Tarheel 40A-HP dedicated to 40 meters on a brush guard up front, running barefoot at 200 W. The radio is permanently installed and the vehicle has lots of permanent bonding. Power for the amplifier was supplied by a 200-Ah SOK LFP battery. The radio was powered by a separate home-brew 200-Ah LFP battery. Accessories ran from a 75-Ah LFP battery. The battery setup allows us to operate from a fixed location (county line) without drawing any current from the vehicle’s start battery.
Counties activated: 23 (13 in Vermont, 6 in New Hampshire, and 4 in Mass). 1210 miles of driving, including 600 miles in New England and a little more than 600 to get there and back.
Mike, N2MG, and I started planning this contest in spring 2022 and we’ve been looking forward to it since our NEQP debut in 2021. This year’s NEQP was our third full-time QP effort together, though we have collaborated on the last two NYQP contests as well, as separate M/S mobile operations. We were looking forward to another long drive with obscure movie references, road sign commentary, incredible scenery, high gasoline bills, made-up on-the-spot memes, and vaguely inappropriate phonetics of the sort that begin to flow freely after a certain amount of fatigue and sleep deprivation have set in. In short, there’s way more to our operation than just the operating!
Most of all we looked forward to “greeting our regular customers,” and you did not disappoint!
Route: Started at the BERMA/FRAMA line, in a deep valley. Traveled north into Vermont, then northeast into New Hampshire, turning northwest and traveling back into Vermont on Saturday night. Stayed in St Johnsbury, arriving around 1:15 AM local time. Departed by 8 AM for points north and west in Vermont, then traveled south down Rte 100 most of the day through Vermont, finishing with two more Massachusetts counties. Left New England at 0001Z for home.
By any objective measure, 1300 QSOs looks really good for a mobile operation in a 20-hour contest that gets 1000 logs every year. However, aside from a few good runs, it was a struggle for us to get anything going most of the time. Other QSO parties create a puzzling issue to overcome for the first 9-hour segment of the contest. Like 2021, we ended day 1 with just 555 QSOs. Our rates were terrible for long stretches, especially Sunday afternoon. We had a three-hour stretch of 28-24-30 QSOs, for example, and only four clock hours of the entire contest at or above 100 QSOs, peaking at 123 in the 21Z hour on Sunday. That is to say, not close to what this setup usually produces. Still–keeping things in perspective– we had a great time. We were able to be out on the road operating the radio in ideal weather and with amazing scenery.
Highlights: Every QSO with our regular chasers, especially OM2VL, K0SM (20+ Qs), and KE2AMI. KE2AMI (Mrs K0SM), who has been licensed just a few months, made her first-ever CW QSO with us on Saturday evening and then worked us 11 more times throughout the course of the event! A big thrill for this OT. OM2VL (30+ QSOs) was as reliable as ever. I began to get nervous if we went 20 minutes in a new county or a new band without working him. He and DL3DXX were strong and easy to work on all the bands–stronger than a lot of stateside and VE stations.
Other chasers who called in ten times or more included K1GU, WN4AFP, N8II, K4BAI, AA5JF, DL3DXX, K1RO, K3MM, K4QS, K5KPE, K9CW, KO1H, N2CU, N2JJ, N4OX, N6AR, N8UM, NE8P, NS2N, WA6KHK, WB2FUE, WB2WPM, and WN1GIV. One of the greatest feelings in mobile QSO party operating is the thrill you get when all the regulars call in–it’s really hard to describe how cool that is!
The scenery was another great highlight. It is a very fine spring this year in New England! The station was reliable too, which you can’t take for granted. We broke the PowerPole connector off the cable that powers all the accessory electronics as we were loading Mike’s stuff into the vehicle, but that was a quick fix–that’s why we carry spares.
Lowlights: Read K5ZD’s comments on conditions. He uses the word “terrible” three times, which is simply not enough. The thing that hurt us the most was a complete lack of short skip, which aside from making it hard to work people, made frequency selection and management difficult. We could often only tell that we were too close to someone else by hearing their callers in the passband. Hard to say how many times we chose poorly, but it was a lot–we had to move around a lot more than usual to try to find a quiet, clear spot. Apologies to all who are used to finding us on the same frequency on each band with every QSY.
Noise was also a challenge. Hearing well is difficult when you’re on the road. I know people were frustrated trying to work us; I apologize. We were frustrated too. Thank you for sticking with us! The station works well, and the vehicle itself is quiet, but during our trips through towns of any size and even rural areas along power lines, we had some hideous noise. With more normal conditions, people are louder on average, so we have fewer issues hearing people.
We had a weird issue in Northern Vermont on Saturday night on 80 meters. Every time Mike would transmit, the hands-free function in the car would want to dial a phone call. This got old in about 30 seconds. This is a problem I solved a few years ago by disconnecting the rear defroster in the Pilot–all it takes is about 35 W to trigger it when the defroster is connected. We were running 500 W. The only thing I had changed was to plug in the dual-band 144/440 FM radio for the trip to Mike’s house. It uses a PowerPole cable that goes directly to the vehicle battery, but it doesn’t have a choke in line. Once I disconnected the power cable to that radio, the problem was solved.
On balance, it was a great event and we enjoyed it a lot. It’s one of my favorite radio weekends of the year. Thanks to K1KI and anyone else who has a hand in making NEQP a great event! Looking forward to being back next year.
K5ZD/m – Conditions were poor. No one seemed to be able to hear us. Just a few QSOs in each county.
KA1WPM – This was my best year yet, but it wasn’t starting out that way. In the last two hours of the contest I had a run like I have never had before. One third of all my contacts came in those final hours. After using N1MM+ for several years and buying a foot switch a few months ago I was ready to log the pileup. Finished the weekend a very happy OM.
KB1VUN – First time doing NEQP on CW. 20m and higher weren’t there, but got a few on 40m.
KC1BDJ – Worked a few hours out of Bennington County, VT. Great day!
KC1SA – IC-7610, hex beam & end fed antennas. First time seriously operating the NEQP. Had a bit of fun. Band conditions were not great but considering I think I did ok.
KC1V – Great party! I made a good improvement over last year’s score, but I still have lots of room to improve. I’ll be back.
KC2FHG – This is my first QSO party (New England QSO party). hope this works.
KO1H – Great Fun best q total for me. But low on mults.
N1AIA – I had a great vision for this year, but in the end I operated for just 18 minutes. My rate was wonderful but did little to ensure the masses would get YORME. Sorry, folks, maybe next year.
N1BUG – NEQP is my favorite contest but the timing is awkward. This year spring came early and I was able to get past the crunch in time to enjoy contesting. Propagation was poor and low bands noisy after dark. I hadn’t done a contest in some time and was struggling with things I had forgotten about N1MM+. Overall, considering my recent lack of practice I thought it went well. I wish more contests had hours like NEQP with a built in break for sleep.
N1DC – I had planned a major effort this year to break my own NOR MA record. A unexpected turn of events…. Felt lousy Friday night. The chills started, then a fever of 102. Saturday morning still feeling terrible after no sleep. My wife gave me a Covid test and it was POSITIVE. She tested too and was also POSITIVE. I only operated for 2 hours Saturday. I could not hold my head up and my body was shaking with the chills. I’ve never felt this bad in my 70 years. I managed to put in another 7 hours on Sunday after hydrating like crazy. All in all a decent effort considering how I felt. Thanks for the QSO’s.
N1E – We had greater participation this year. While the bands were up and down, more operators helped us improve our operation over last year. Thanks for another great NEQP!
N1JI – Only had an hour to operate this year – Thanks for the QSOs! Ran my KX3 at 5 watts to an 88-foot doublet up 30 feet from my downtown Concord NH QTH.
N1TA – Saturday evening was enjoyable; got to 60k in a hurry! Good rate on 40 and 80. However, woke up Sunday to the poorest condx in recent memory. NOAA released an alert for a sudden geomag impulse — and that was the story of the day. I checked repeatedly to see if the antenna was even connected. 20 and 15 were a slog and went from 5-10 station bursts to near total blackout. At around noon, I had made less than 200 QSOs on the day. Reverted to 40 long before I wanted to, and it seemed like everyone else did the same. There was some rate there, but nothing to write home about. I quit an hour or so early. Missed my goal of 1000 QSOs by a big margin and didn’t grab as many mults as I should have. Nonetheless, had a great time. Thanks to the out of state participants for making this one fun. Rig: FLEX-6600 Antennas: 130′ doublet @ 120′; 20M vertical delta loop @ 90′.
NG1M – Strange conditions. 10M & 15M were simply not available, which caught me by surprise. I guess due to the Geomagnetic Storm Watch (G2-class) that hit the northern-tier US States. Got some great runs in on 20M & 40M on Saturday, but family issues took most of Sunday. I always enjoy a contest where people are trying to call my QTH! Thx for the Qs! FLEX 6600 & Power Genius XL Amp N1MM+
WTRC 2014 Tower & Wires at 40’
NZ1U/m(W1UJ) – Congrats to all of the mobile operators and teams! Some of the most hospitable experiences this weekend from Maine folks. Thanks to K1KI and all those that make the QSO party weekend the success and fun that it is! K3 ~50W, pair of High Sierra screwdriver antennas with full length radials in the back of the N1WK F-150.
W1BOS – Portable operation from Millennium Park in Boston, giving out the SUFMA
multiplier on Sunday.
W1DX/m – The NEQP is a fun contest. Thanks to Tom K1KI, the CTRI Contest Group and the YCCC home team and all who participated and supported the operations this year. For W1DX/m below are the statistics for our 2 day, 12 county rover tour. Note that we did only 1 SSB contact. Mostly all went well. But, we did have a few computer lockups due to Murphy who has found a welcoming home in Windows 10. Ops: John W1XX, Bob K1XA, and John W1AN Total QSOs: 703 which is down 47 from last year.
Rig: K3 100W on marine deep cycle battery. Logging software: N1MM+ Murphy V2023.88. Antenna: 40M, 20M pairs of hamsticks at 22 feet mounted on Ford van hitch.
Total on air time: 10 hrs 04 min Max 60 minute rate: 103 Max 10 minute rate: 150
We worked OM2VL from all 12 counties Other DX included DL, LA, HK, UA, SP
703 QSOs, 78,680 Raw score
Saturday – Total miles driven: 61 QSOs: 272
Counties: NLNCT: 75 WINCT: 56 WASRI: 94 KENRI: 47
Sunday – Total miles driven: 205 QSOs: 431
BARMA: 87 BRIMA: 30 BRIRI: 55 NEWRI: 50 NORMA: 26 PLYMA: 94 PRORI: 30
W1END – Rig was FTdx101 and Butternut vertical. It was fun but sorting out N1MM logger was a nightmare.
W1FJ – Not great conditions, apologies to those weak ones that I could not pull out out my local line noise. Had some nice runs, lots of down time. Thanks all for Q’s
W1HNZ – NEQP 2023 was an enjoyable experience even though propagation conditions were not ideal. Thanks for all the Q’s.
W1KDA – Not much time to play radio this week-end, but did manage to get on for about 7 hours – Bands were not great here in RI but I managed over 400 contacts in spite.
W1OO – Many thanks to Paul, W1IMD for the use of the excellent station. Thanks also to K1EU and K1JB for the use of the W1OO callsign. This year’s NEQP would be the first remote contest for Chuck, WS1L. John, K1ESE, was a regular user of Paul’s W1IMD contest station in Maine. Discussions on the morning 3527 roundtable led to a decision to try for a serious Multi-Single effort between us. For a month or so Chuck tested remote configurations using a Remote Rig box and Flex SmartSDR software. Once he was comfortable connecting to John’s home station we moved to Paul’s contest station. It took some work, but a week before the contest we had things working well. That is when mother nature hit, with severe weather causing both hardware and network failures at the contest station. It wasn’t until the day before that Paul was able to access the site and get things back running. Early Saturday afternoon was a final check, and everything was working as it should.
It became clear from the start that NE1QP was our competition this year. We were pretty much neck and neck the entire weekend. John’s notes for Saturday: I spend the morning watching an additional tower being erected at the W1IMD station. The crane was fascinating. 4-6PM, I ran on 20M for two hours at the start of the contest and conditions were decent. The lead on the Contest Online Scoreboard kept switching between W1OO to NE1QP. Chuck’s notes for Saturday 6-8 PM: I started on 20M, but rate kept dropping so about 6:40 I moved to 40, where it went through the roof. I should have moved sooner. The 10-Minute Rate Meter stayed in the 160-180 range for a long time. Even towards 8 PM it was in the 80-90 range. The 7-8 PM hour we managed 103 Q’s and were in the lead. For now… John’s notes for Saturday 8-10PM. After two hours, I handed it off to Chuck and he did the next two hours. My second shift started at 6pm. I started running on 20M and switched to 40M. I didn’t stop to look for multipliers… Chuck’s notes for Saturday 10 PM – 1 AM: I started out on 80M, which was good
but as the rate dropped faster than I liked I went back to 40, where things worked pretty well into the West Coast. Rate was respectable but not great. The last hour I mixed some S&P in with the Running. I worked a few EU stations in some contest over there. One took my OXF ME happily, the other one
wanted a Serial # so I gave him Nr 1.
John’s notes for Sunday 9AM-Noon: I started on 20M. It was a bit slow. Went to 40M but not as many stations there, Tried 15M and stayed for a while but the signals were not great. Ended up on 20M. I continued to just run, no S&P,no looking for mults. I should have sensed a problem… Chuck’s notes for Sunday Noon-3PM: I was able to run on 20, then moved to 15 but the rate wasn’t what I expected so I went back to 20. Rates were good but not great with a 61, 37 and 56 hour. I only picked up 2 mults the entire time, and NE1QP had passed us by when I turned things over to John… John’s notes for Sunday 3-6PM: I was very surprised to see we had fallen behind NE1QP. We had almost 100 more QSOs but they had many more mults. I gave up on running and went searching for mults. I quickly picked up six. While waiting for more to show up, I would do short runs on 20M. Back to chasing I picked up another five. We were back in the hunt. I went to running on 20M and 40m but stopping it whenever a new mult showed up in the N1MM available window. I usually was able to get back to my run frequency before it was occupied. We had edged in front again. Chuck’s notes for Sunday 6-8 PM: I found 20 to be showing lots of stations on the band map but they were all W1’s, too close for easy S&P. Running kept a fair rate but 40 wound up doing better for us since the W1’s were fairly strong and the mid-west/west coast were workable. I did check 10 and 15 but very few signals there. It was neck and neck at the end with NE1QP. Our raw scores came out ahead, but only by about 3 percent. It was great fun working together. This would not be possible without the efforts of Tom K1KI and his crew for the hard work of running such a great contest.
W1QK – Thanks for the contacts.
W1RM – I did not push, just a relaxed effort
W1SEG – NEQP was a lot of fun! It definitely sharpens my operating skills. My goal for next year is to be active on more bands. Thanks to all who make NEQP happen.
W1UE – 15 and 10m were basically nothing. I did work a few on 15m, but it was like pulling teeth and most of them were in Florida. Not very exciting. Europeans spotted on 20, 15, and 10 were usually inaudible here. Unfortunately, we had a contest scheduled for this weekend. Thanks to Greg W1KM for the use of his great station!
W1VE/m – 921 miles of driving, 35 counties activated, 3 tanks of gas, many OM pee breaks,
and beautiful New England spring weather. I credit Ed, K1EP with a tremendous amount of planning. Doing well in NEQP mobile requires a lot of skill in planning the route. Ed and I have both been
in NEQP many times, and know the pitfals to avoid. We were almost always mobile-in-motion, and had only a few times where we stopped for any length of time. Thanks to the amazing posse who followed us around each county. We were not loud, as conditions were not the best. We ran just 100 watts from the K4, into Hamsticks on Ed’s Subaru Forrester. Ed’s setup had the K4 on the left-side back seat. He purchased a 12v big monitor, which was attached to the back of the passenger seat. He had a wooden tray for our lap, which held the keyboard and mouse. This made “butt in seat” pretty comfortable. The Elecraft K4 was a pleasure to use, and we had no issues at all. Thanks for the fun! It was a blast.
W1WIU – Thanks to all the organizers and sponsors for another great NEQP !. Worked lots of op’s with connections to Rhode Island. Poor conditions both days., but had a blast. Hope to see you next year.
WZ1V – SSB-only, was on just 45 mins Saturday, and when time permitted Sunday. 10 and 15 were dead, signals on 20 so weak I thought my wire fell down. Spent 30 minutes total on 80 to finish up. 41 counties logged. Thanks for the QSOs. Local club here is 5 miles from my house, Shoreline Amateur Radio Club of Westbrook CT.
W3SM – Limited time this year. Thanks for the Q’s.
WA1SAY – Thanks for QSO party, had very much fun.
WO1N – Station: FTdx5000, C3-SS@38′, 40MDi@50′, 80M-K2KQ, N1MM+ Wow conditions were pretty punk for the entire event. Watching crazy K indices and long duration flares all weekend. Crappy weather all week so I didn’t get the yard work done that I had planned. When Saturday dawned beautiful and bright I knew I was in for a challenge to balance contesting and the other stuff. N1MM+ says 8 hours, which is about right. One session right after I came in from moving some heavy trash barrels of compacted, wet leaves resulted in the fingers not going to where they are supposed to on the keyboard. It was typo after typo, fixup after fixup. I am a good touch typist so I’m like WTF? Eventually the fine motor skills returned. About 99% running. All CW. Best hour was 88 Qs. I need to figure out what I’m not doing right in the multiplier department. Score attributed to my local Ham club after spending some cycles in the prior week motivating members to get on the air and make some Qs. All in all, not a super serious effort but fun none-the-less.
WW1ME – NIL here on 10 & 15. Wish I had spent more time on the air, but other responsibilities beckoned. Did slightly worse this year than last. Had a good time, though.