2021OhQPWriteup – Click for PDF version of the Writeup.
It was a hot contest. Not necessarily the bands, but the weather. Temperatures well into the 90’s either encouraged people to stay indoors to avoid the heat, or to deal with lots of sweat otherwise. The numbers were down significantly from 2020, when the combination of a five weekend month gave the OhQP an open date with no conflicts with other contests, and major covid stay-at-home orders kept many people at home and on the radio.
There were a lot of familiar calls at the top of the Ohio results. Bob Hayes, KW8N, in Single Operator High Power; Jim Galm, W8WTS, in Low Power; the multiop crewof K8T at WA3C in Jefferson county; and Rover K8RYU. One newcomer to the top: Anthony Luscre, K8ZT, took the Ohio QRP honors. The K8O mobile team of OhQP Activity Whip W8CAR and K8NZ kept the highways as well as the bands warm. The Emergency Operations Center station of K8ES, the Delaware Amateur Radio Association, took that class.
The OhQP does not have official CW and SSB single mode categories, hoping to encourage or at least not discourage people from making QSOs on the other mode. But we do break out scores by mode. Vic Kean, K1LT, repeats as the top Ohio CW effort, and Jeramy Duncan, KC8QDQ, is once again the top SSB entry..
There were new winning faces from outside Ohio. Taking out of state Single Operator High Power honors was David Smith, ND4Y from Kentucky. The top low power score was from Arkansas’ Ed Burris, WA5SOG. A repeat winner of the QRP class was Florida’s Tom Warren, K3TW. And of course the DX winner was Laci Vegh, OM2VL, who is extremely active does incredibly well in many of the stateside QSO Parties.
The North Coast Contesters was the top Ohio club; the Kentucky Contest Group the top out of state club.
All the Ohio counties made it into an OhQP log. There were no SSB QSOs from Williams county, and no CW QSOs from Holmes, Knox and Ross. Overall the rarest county was Crawford, with Belmont, Holmes, Marion, Morgan, and Pickaway close behind. Lorain was the most worked county followed by Cuyahoga. New York was the most worked state, with Florida, Pennsylvania, and Texas following, each with over 1000 logged QSOs.
The Ohio QSO Party is sponsored by the Mad River Radio Club, a group of hams interested in contesting. We also sponsor the Michigan QSO Party in April – please stop by for that one as well! Full information on the MRRC is available at www.madriverradioclub.org. In past years we’ve been at our “Suite in the Sun” in the Dayton Hamvention flea market. Of course that has not happened for the past two years, but we hope things will be better by May and we can meet many of you there.
And remember to mark your calendars for the 2022 Ohio QSO Party, on Saturday, August 27. See you then!
A call you didn’t hear but was still very important in the 2021 (and other) OhQP’s: Matt, KD8CWV, who chauffeurs rover K8RYU around all those rare southeastern Ohio Counties.
With the hot weather K8MR/M passed on the usual 2007 Toyota minivan with a dead air conditioner in favor of this Prius V. Much noisier RF wise, but it was cooler and made the 500 mile trip with less than 12 gallons of gas!
The Delaware Amateur Radio Association activated the Delaware Red Cross Emergency Operations Center Station as K8ES, and earned another plaque for their wall!