North American QSO Parties

SITE MAP

Home

Auburn CA

North American QSO Parties (NAQP)

Next to the California QSO Party, I think my favorite contests are the North American QSO Parties. They are sponsored by the National Contest Journal (NCJ), and are held twice a year in January and August. There are separate contests for CW, SSB, and RTTY in both the winter and summer.

The NAQPs are supported by most of the logging programs in use (I use TR-Log), which automatically keep track of your score, mults worked, and can be programmed to display past year's exchange data. The contests last 12 hours, and as a single operator, you are allowed to operate 10 of those 12 hours. It is not at all strange to easily work WAS in that time.

The Contest

Unlike some of the more frantic contests, the NAQPs tend to be fairly mellow and fun. They last from 1800Z on Saturday to 0600Z on Sunday (12 hrs) [for those on the left coast, that's 1000 - 2200 PST on Sat], and, as mentioned above, single operators may operate for a maximum of 10 of the 12 hours. Thus, they are definitely not the sleep-depriving marathons of some other contests, and they allow you to spend a Saturday contesting and then get re-acquainted with your family on Sunday, thereby maintaining the healthy spousal relationship so necessary to successful amateur operating.

There is a power limit too -- 100 watts, which is a real "equalizer" for smaller stations, although there is no limit to the amount of wire/aluminum you care to hang in the sky. In the CW sections, code speeds tend to be quite a bit more leisurely than in some of the big DX contests, and you have the option of listening through another contact by a station just to make sure you got the exchange right which also lowers the stress level a bit. And, since it is basically a North American contest, the only calls you are likely to have to copy that begin with numbers are 6Y and 8P.

Unlike most other contests, the exchange is your name and your state, province, or North American DXCC entity, all of which count as multipliers. It is a multi-band contest, and you can work a station on all of the permitted bands (160 [except for the RTTY contests], 80, 40, 20, 15, and 10 -- as usual, no contesting in the 30, 17, and 12 meter bands).

You are not constrained to use your real first name. Pick name or anyone you want to be for 10 hours -- "Brad," as in Pitt has sometimes intrigued me. In the Jan 2001 contest, just after the 2000 national election, nearly every Florida station was "Chad."

The Rules

You can find the rules at NAQP Rules or here as a PDF file on this website. Several of the PC soundcard RTTY programs such as MMTTY and MixW directly support the contest and it's rules

NCCC

The Northern California Contest Club enters the Club/Team competition for the NAQP's, usually fielding several teams. Unlike the ARRL Sweepstakes, where all team members have to operate with a 175 mile radius of a designated "club center," you can live anywhere in North America and, as a member of NCCC, contribute your score to a team as well as compete individually.

The NAQPs are just a lot of fun, and are hard to beat for general CW practice. I hope to work you in 2005.

Top of Page | K6DGW Home | Fred's Pages | Home

Permission is granted to reproduce any and all textual material in this HTML page for non-commercial purposes only. Reproduction or use of any graphic or photographic image is prohibited without the written permission of the site author and all persons appearing in such images. Reproduction and/or distribution of any software products downloaded from these pages is subject to the terms and conditions accompanying the downloaded files. All logos are the copyrighted property of the organization(s) represented, are used here with permission, and may be reproduced and/or used only with the permission of those organization(s).