One of the many activities a ham can get involved in is
contesting. Contests come in a lot of different flavors, some are
restricted to a continent, others are world wide. They all have a
common thread, their objective is to make the most contacts in a
specific time period and to contact at least one station in each
of the designated county, state, country, whatever.
I've never really been comfortable contesting from my house. Most
contests run at least 24 hours and after sitting there for 5 or 6
hours I start to feel kinda like I should be mowing the lawn or
something. However there is one contest that early in my ham
career I really got into. That is the California
QSO party. This contest is sponsored by the Northern
California Contest Club, of which I am a member.
The objective is simple. The club makes sure that there is at
least one ham on the air in each of the counties in California
during the contest period. People outside California try to
contact as many counties as they can and also make as many
contacts as possible. Also, the rest of the ham operators in the
world have a chance to contact counties that they could not
otherwise get. Many hams try to collect all the counties in the
USA for special awards.
Club members here in California compete with each other to try to
make the most contacts over all and work at least one station in
each state and Canadian province. For scoring purposes your total
number of contacts is multiplied by the number of povinces and
states you worked. Also there is a record for each county for the
highest score ever made from that county. The whole contest is
held on the first weekend of October and runs for 24 hours.
Please email me with any comments at kim@knjcomputers.com
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