Lessons from the VA QSO party

My score is counted, my logs are in, overall I'm ready to go. So, now that I've done my first contest, what do I think of the whole thing?

First of all, let me start out with my score. I ended up with 6710 points, if I did all of my math correctly. That ended up to be 58 mobile contacts, 22 phone contacts, 24 multipliers, and 20 different counties. I believe I made a contact almost 100 miles away by 2m simplex! It was a fun trip, I did see some cool weather, but I ended up driving 350 miles, which was a bit too much... Still, I would say that it was worth it overall.

Operating the Virginia QSO contest on VHF only

With the Virginia QSO party coming tomorrow, I thought I'd share a bit about my experience with operating on VHF for the party. It will be quite a challenge, but I'm up to it, because I planned a head.

Operating an amateur radio contest only on VHF is quite tricky. Essentially, VHF is only line of site, with perhaps a bit of "Tropospheric bending" possible. But, for the Virginia QSO party, it is actually quite possible to do well, if you plan carefully. I'm not going to reveal all of my secrets, but here's a few general tips.

Virginia QSO Pary 2013

One of the big things that Hams like to do is contests. During these contests, the best operators will make thousands of contacts from over a hundred countries. I'm not able to do that, quite frankly. While I have the license for HF that is capable of world wide communication, I don't have the transceiver or antenna for it... Still, I've been interested in doing a competition of some sort. So, what options are there?