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Summer 2004 Issue |
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 Photo A. Bob, KØNR, operating VHF QRP using a Yaesu FT-817 from Mt. Herman, DM79. (Photo courtesy WA6TTY) |
QRP
Operation in |
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The QRP category is alive and well in most of the major VHF contests. I’ve been active on and off in that category over the last decade, but I really wasn’t sure what the rest of the QRP operators were doing (see Photo A). I wondered what kind of equipment they had, where they operated from, and how they got there. More important, I wondered, “What is the attraction of QRP in a VHF contest?” The QRP category in ARRL contests is called Single Operator Portable with an output power limit of 10 watts PEP. Also, a portable power source must be used and operation must be from a location that is not a permanent station. In the CQ WW VHF Contest, the QRP category is called Single-Op All-Band QRP and has the same 10 watts PEP power limit, but operation from a permanent station location and use of commercial power are allowed.
Kevin Kaufhold, W9GKA, recently completed a
data analysis of the QRP category for the ARRL contests.1 This analysis
shows that the total number of operators active in the QRP category peaked
at 84 in 1995 and has been relatively stable for the past five years
(averaging 54 for the past five years). W9GKA’s analysis is very thorough
and provides a strong quantitative look at the operating category. The
history of the CQ WW VHF Contest is not as well documented, but there were
20 QRP entries in the 2003 contest. To investigate what QRP operators are doing in VHF contests, I surveyed the operators who turned in logs from five recent major VHF contests: 2002 ARRL January VHF Sweepstakes, 2002 ARRL June VHF QSO Party, 2002 ARRL September VHF QSO Party, 2003 January ARRL VHF Sweepstakes, and 2003 CQ WW VHF Contest. For the ARRL contests, I accessed the score information from the ARRL web site. For the CQ WW VHF Contest, John Lindholm, W1XX, provided me with the scoring information I needed.
I matched operator callsigns to e-mail
addresses using on-line sources such as qrz.com. In some cases, I did web
searches to find e-mail addresses. However, I was unable to locate e-mail
addresses for everyone. The survey was sent via e-mail to the resulting
list of e-mail addresses, with a second follow-up message a few weeks
later to the non-respondents. There were 82 unique callsigns in the
database, with 67 that I matched to e-mail addresses. I received 39
responses, or about half of the radio operators in the database. Click here to return to Summer 2004 highlights Click here to subscribe to VHF _________________ © Copyright 2004, CQ Communications, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced or republished, including posting to a website, in part or in whole, by any means, without the express written permission of the publisher, CQ Communications, Inc. Hyperlinks to this page are permitted.
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