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Fun QRP Activities and Events
So you've got that QRP kit up & running
and made a few contacts with it to prove that it works. Congratulations!
Now what?
Thanks to the popularity of QRP and the vivid
imaginations of those involved, quite a variety of on-the-air
activities exist that will allow you to put that 5 watt built-by-you
marvel through its paces. Here are the major crowd-pleasers:
North
American QRP CW Club
A newly-formed club, NAQCC sponsors innovative
events including my favorite, the monthly
"80m Sprints". These Sprints offer multipliers for
operating with a straight key or bug and often have a theme
which varies from month to month. I'd never believed that 80m
and QRP were capable of much more than local QSOs, but in 3
months of these Sprints (and the curiousity they inspired on
80m QRP) I now have 29 states and 9 countries on the band -
all with my battery-fed AT Sprint & dipole).
Other events from this club include sprints
(short, 2 to 4 hour contests) with a holiday-related theme,
slow-speed sprints, old-time rig sprints, sprints dealing with
age and year-licensed of the operators - even a VHF/UHF CW sprint.
Unlike most contests, NAQCC typically schedules their events
for week nights which "spreads out the fun" since
most other contests are on weekends.
Adventure
Radio Society
There are two main contests from this club:
a monthly "Spartan Sprint" and an annual "Flight
of the Bumble Bees".
The idea of the monthly
Spartan Sprints is to encourage development and testing of lightweight
radio gear suitable for outdoor, human-powered QRP expeditions.
This event is usually not conducted outdoors but rather is the
driving force to encourage development of efficient, lightweight
equipment suitable for that purpose such as hiking, kayaking
or backpacking trips. A typical Monday evening Sprint will consist
of several dozen operators around the country contacting as
many of their counterparts as possible in a two hour period.
Station weight of the top scorers is usually 5 or 6 ounces!
This weight includes transceiver, batteries, earphones and paddles.
The annual Flight
of the Bumble Bees puts all the testing of the monthly sprints
to practice - operators take to the hills, dales and meadows
across the country with their micro-stations in tow, and set
up shop for 4 hours of ionosphere-scorching fun, working the
other Bees and those non-bees who are participating from home.
But wait - it's not over! Once the contest ends and the Bees
return to their normal human lives a large number of them post
photos of their excursions and soap-box reports of where they
went, what went right and (best of all!) what hardships they
endured. Excellent reading and great fun.
Fox
Hunts
Fox Hunts take place every Thursday
evening and draw quite a crowd. From their website:
"The QRP Fox Hunt is a series of two-hour
amateur radio events during which QRP stations ("Hounds")
attempt to work specific QRP stations designated as "The
Fox." Throughout any particular season, there may be a
"dual hunt," with two foxes on the air at a time.
These hunts are usually conducted in CW but can be in any other
mode the committee authorizes for a particular season. This
season's hunt takes place within +/- 10 KHz of 7.040 MHz QRP
calling frequency and starts at 0200 UTC, ending almost two
hours later at 0359 UTC".
New
England QRP Club's "QRP Afield"
This annual 6
hour contest takes place in September and affords an opportunity
to get outdoors and share in the on-the-air comraderie of contacting
others who are interested in the same aspect of ham radio -
namely, building their own equipment and getting on the air
with it, all the while taking advantage of the fact that QRP
is often synonymous with portability.
Arizona
sQRPions "Freeze Your Butt Off"
Leave it to a bunch of warm-weather QRPers
in Arid Zona to come up with a contest in which the multiplier
is based on the temperature in this 8 hour, outdoor contest.
The lower the temperature, the higher the multiplier. Kind of
reminds me of Twain's "Tom Sawyer" where Tom conned
his buddies and other passers-by into white-washing his Aunt
Polly's fence by pretending it was so much fun. His reluctance
to share the chore made everyone want to do it, so being the
decent lad that he was, he relented and let others do all the
work while he relaxed in the shade with thoughts of Becky Thatcher
wafting through his mind. Such is the annual
FYBO which takes place in the dead of winter (of course) when
northern QRPers and others, sending poor CW from numb fingers
finally return to their warm cozy homes so they can email their
logs to Arizona. Sound like fun? It is!
QRP
to The Field
One of my all-time favorites, this annual
outdoor contest is similar to the two contests above but usually
includes a theme that varies from year to year. Past themes
have included bonus points for operating from near a state border,
a body of water or some other purely-for-fun modus operandi.
Almost as fun as an evening with Halle Berry, this is one of
the most anticipated contests in QRPdom and turn-out is excellent.
Again, the fun comes in two parts - the actual operating and
then the reading about other op's experiences a few days later.
Do a Google search on this (and the other contests) to see what
I mean.
Run
For the Bacon Sprint
This 2-hour sprint from the Flying Pigs QRP
Club is held monthly, usually on
Sunday evenings (US time). Check out their website for info
on more contests and challenges that they sponsor, all in the
name of fun and that ageless essential - Bragging Rights!
QRP
Barbershop Contest
"Barbers" are those whose callsign
ends with "ESE" - get it? And there are at least five
of them! Everyone else is a "Customer". This is a
2-hour event held on the 5th Wednesday of the month, which occurs
roughly every other month. Feeling
shaggy? Need a little cleaning up around the edges? Head on
over to their website and see what it's all about.
Impromtu and Roll Your Own
Every now and then a group of QRPers will get
the idea to meet on a given night, usually on 7040kHz and contact
each other using milliwatt or crystal-controlled rigs. Word
gets out, others join in and a good time is had by all. This
usually follows the release of a new kit such as the Tuna Tin
II or the Rock- Mite rigs. There is no exchange, no points -
just fun contacting other folks with your peppermint-smelling,
Altoids-housed, ether-burning behemouth.
And remember that you need not wait for a club
to come along and offer an event. You can have your own personal
goal with QRP in general or a specific rig in particular. I
am currently trying for WAS with my AT Sprint on a 9-volt battery
and have 11 states to go. One QRPer worked DXCC with a Norcal
40. Others have their own goals known only to them.
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