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After balancing both ends of the United States last week with the Arizona and Pennslyvania QSO Parties, you can narrow your beam headings this time, with the New York QSO Party on one end, and QSO parties in both Illinois and Iowa.
If you are worried about how you will juggle all three of these - don't fret - the schedules make it so all three are not on at once.
Both the Iowa and New York contests begin at 1400z on Saturday. The Iowa test ends nine hours later, the New York contest goes three more to 0200z on Sunday.
The Illinois QSO Party is a Sunday only contest, running from 1700z to 0100 on Monday the 18th.
If you are thinking about a massive sweep of counties in all three states, you can start with the 99 in Iowa, move to the 62 in New York and then finish up with the 102 in Illinois.
That's not exactly a small order, especially with the time limits in each test.
If you haven't heard of the Iowa QSO Party, that's because it had been dormant for years, and was revived by the Ottumwa Amateur Radio Club in 2009.
N0AGE was the inaugural winner from Iowa in the Fixed class, W0IW was the top Multi and NN9K took the Mobile category in a close race with W9MSE, who would be the top mobile the next day in the Illinois QSO Party. Not bad!
Like the Iowa QSO Party, the New York QSO Party had disappeared over the years, and was run in 2009 for the first time since the 1980's.
The NYQP received 210 logs, and all 62 counties in the state were activated last year as well, though no one got a sweep. The closest was W2UJ who nabbed 50; the best out of state effort came from Bob Harder W0BH, who nailed down 47 NY counties.
N2CU was the NY Mixed Mode High Power winner; NT2A won the NY Mixed Mode Low Power.
W2LC won the mobile CW category, with N2BEG leading the mobile SSB. WB2ABD won the mixed mobile section.
The ILQP has been around since the early 1960's, when it was a 30 hour contest.
It was moved to October in 1985, and after butting heads with the California and Pennsylvania QSO Parties, it finally found a home on the third Sunday in October.
KI9A was the winner of the Illinois Fixed category in 2009, while W0BH from Kansas was the top out-of-state Single Op, narrowly edging WA3HAE in Pennsylvania. W8TM was the top QRP station.
As mentioned above, W9MSE was the top mobile in Illinois, as he hit 22 different counties in eight hours - that's what we call 'good planning'.
While no one got the sweep of all 102 counties in Illinois, six operators were able to get to 75 in all. W0BH had the most counties of any participant, as he finished with 84 - one more than the 83 worked by WA3HAE.
What about 2010? Can you make the Triple Play Sweep in Iowa, Illinois and New York?
This is the "Pre-Stew" that the Boring Amateur Radio Club cooked up a few years ago as a way to have even more fun on the 160 meter band.
The rules are the same as the regular Stew Perry - no more than 14 hours of operating during the 24 hour contest period, which starts at 1500z on October 23 and goes to 1500z on Sunday October 24.
Several things are different about this contest - the exchange is simply your four character grid square (e.g. FM19), and the scoring is done by the sponsor, as you get more points for a QSO with a low power or QRP station.
The categories are simply Single Op and Multi-Op, with low, high and QRP power. No DX cluster use is allowed in this contest.
For more on the rules, go to the BARC web site.
K9DX - Single Operator High Power
K0PK - Single Operator Low Power
N2WN - Single Operator QRP
KH6LC - Multi-Op High Power
K4IU - Multi-Op Low Power
UA2FF - Single Operator High Power
N0NI - Single Operator Low Power
K1ZM - Single Operator QRP
W2GD - Multi-Operator HP
VE3OSZ - Multi-Op LP
