QRP Results in the January VHF Contest

The July issue of QST arrived in the mail recently with an article on the January VHF Sweepstakes results. It always takes about 6 months to have the scores show up in QST, so some people make it a point to share their scores via email and figure out who won. I just submit my log and then forget about it until the scores get published, which means I have usually completely forgotten about the contest by then. It can make for a nice surprise when the article gets published.

This year I reverted back to my “hike up a local mountain and operate QRP” operating style. The past few years I have been more of a slacker, operating from the comfort of our cabin up in the mountains. The backpack portable approach is a lot of fun but does limit how many hours I operate and therefore keeps the score on the low side. I am not about to freeze my behind by spending the night on the mountain in January. It does make for a fun hike, often requiring snowshoes to make it up to the summit (but not this year). My soapbox comments, including a few photos, are on the ARRL web site.

So I opened QST and found that I absolutely dominated the Rocky Mountain Division with my 741 points :-). Here’s the list of Single-Operator Portable scores for the entire contest:

The competition in this category is a mix of activity ranging from very serious efforts (e.g., N3YMS with over 32,000 points) to people that just make a handful of contacts. It turns out I placed 6th overall. I didn’t enter the contest to win, but I have to admit it is nice to know there is a category where the Peanut-Whistle Stations don’t get swamped out by the Big Guns.

If you want to try something different, give VHF QRP a try in one of the contests.

73, Bob K0NR