2018 VERMONT QSO PARTY RESULTS

LOG ANALYSIS

AWARDS

In the Vermont competition, certificates will go out to the top 5 single op finishers and top multi op finisher. In addition, all Vermont stations making over 100 QSO’s will also get a certificate.

In the Outside Vermont competition, the “grand prize” for the 2018 Vermont QSO Party is a souvenir 3.4 oz jug of genuine Vermont Maple Syrup which goes to the top 3 Outside Vermont Single Op finishers who are within the U.S. You guys worked hard for those contacts and we recognize you with a product which is uniquely Vermont. If you’ve never had Maple Syrup before, it is very sweet and very concentrated, so a little goes a long way! Here in Vermont it is the breakfast topping of choice on pancakes, waffles or jacked deer steak (!?). Enjoy!

Certificates will also go out to the top 5 stations outside Vermont and stations outside Vermont working 10 or more QSO’s.

VERMONT COMPETITION

At the Host Station W1NVT, conditions were interesting. Friday night provided a lot of QSO's on 80 and 40 meter phone - more than usual. When the pileups subsided, we dabbled a bit on FT8, where there always seems to be crowd to work. On Saturday morning, conditions to Eurpore were mediocre, but we were able to establish good runs. Most of the stations were quite weak and challenging to get a good copy on. Eventually 53 countries were worked on phone, so the stations were out there. In the afternoon, 20 meters settled into controlled pileups where a lot of stations were worked. Normally in slack condtions, 20 meters runs out of gas late in the afternoon. However, the band was taken over by a proliferation of short skip of 300-400 miles, resulting in many QSO's from the dense population areas of MD, VA and PA. At 2330, we switched to 40 meters and continued the pileups. By 0300, when the pileups died down, QSO's were made on CW, RTTY and FT8. Excellent conditions continued throughout Sunday, eventually resulting in a raw total of 2456 QSO's - second most in many years.

Joe K1VMT repeated his first place finish with 236k, running high power. He mostly ran phone, but used CW and RTTY to fill in multipliers on those modes.

Zach W1JXN repeated his second place finish with 161k, running low power. He split time between phone and cw/digital and showed up virtually on all bands - even 10 meters, which opened for about 20 minutes in Vermont. He also ran up the highest digital score.

Bob KB1FRW jumped back into competition this year for a 3rd place finish of 77k, all on low power phone.

Paul AA1SU ran high power for a 4th place finish of 72k and was very close to taking third place. He had big phone totals and did just enough CW to run up his multiplier totals.

Steve W1SFR rounds out the top five with a low power, CW-only score of 40K, which was also the highest CW-only score of all the stations.

It was a battle royale for 6th and 7th place with Bob W4YFJ just edging out Arnie W2HDI 19k to 17k.

The group at W1KOO were the lone multiop entry as they ran up 15k on Saturday afternoon, running both phone and FT8.

LOGGING ACCURACY

This year we continued to use software to check the accuracy of logs. Thanks to Ron AD0DX, we were able to see who was really who in the submitted logs. We still find a suprising number of errors! One log had a number of 30 meter QSO's, which do not count for contest credit. Another log was missing QTH information for several QSO's and these were not counted. Other errors included busted call signs, bad or missing exchanges (i.e. wrong county), wrong band and the dreaded NIL (not in log). Sadly, if you lost a QSO, it might also mean you lose a multiplier as well. The software report was carefully rechecked by a human before any reduction was applied. While most of the logs were in proper Cabrillo format, there were some logs which rivaled the Dead Sea Scrolls and were not readible and were not able to be corrected. If you had bad log information, please consider updating your logging software with the most current version of N1MM or N3FJP for next time!

Vermont QSO Party Results: Outside Vermont Scores

  
AC1EB  ORL    N1FMP  WAS
K1LJL  CHI    N1JEZ  BEN
K1SNO  LAM    N1NRA  ADD
K3MFB  BEN    N1RCX  CHI
KA1ZQX WNH    NK2U   BEN
KB1MDC GRA    W1AD   RUT
KB1PJL CAL    W1EAT  CHI
KB1WOD WAS    W1VE   BEN
KC1EKV ORA    WA1JL  FRA
KE1AZ  CHI    WB2WFJ RUT
N1ARN  FRA
  

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