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The CW leg was last weekend, and as expected, the NAQP CW was a furious affair, as with a sunspot number of 52 going into the weekend, there were even openings for contesters on 10 meters - an important thing for serious NAQP contestants - as this contest has all multipliers available on all bands.
"Nice to find 10m open at the beginning," said Paul Newberry N4PN, who managed to find a dozen multipliers on the band.
While the openings were equal for all competitors on the high bands, the overall scoring in the Single Operator category favored those out on the West Coast.
"Great to see 10m open, however brief!" wrote Chris Hurlbut KL9A, who ran the station of Joe Rudi NK7U in Oregon to a top claimed score of 366,025 points, which included 103 QSO's and 28 multipliers on 10 meters.
"NAQP is great because it's all about rate, and using that 2nd radio to slam the mults!"
Not far behind at 360,242 points was Trey Garlough N5KO. 10k points behind in third was Dan Craig N6MJ.
"It was great to have some q's on 10, but it looks like the stations up north had a better opening," said Craig on 3830.
Meanwhile, in the Multi-Op ranks, it was a battle between Arkansas and Colorado, as Team K5GO claimed 509,296 points to 483,308 for Team K0RF.
One interesting difference between those two scores was that K5GO finished with almost 150 more contacts, but K0RF managed to find 9 more multipliers.
The North American QSO Party contests are just two of a battery of contests in coming months that will continue the battle for slots in the 2014 WRTC:
And even though he's asked a number of times, Rosenberg has never received a response one way or the other.
W3DQ is one of a recently growing number of contesters who live in the District of Columbia, but find themselves required to send an exchange that shows them in Maryland, even though the Maryland state line is up the road.
"My gut political feeling is to continue boycotting NAQP as I don't live in Maryland," Rosenberg said last week, indicating he and Pete Stafford K2PS would instead enter the ARRL RTTY Roundup, which does have DC as a mult.
Rosenberg recently made an official request to NAQP CW/SSB contest manager Bruce Horn, but received no response.
And his effort to post his plea on to the CQ-Contest reflector was rejected by the moderator.
"Send this to them, not the entire reflector," said a message from the unidentified list administrator.
Rosenberg, who calls himself a "proud resident of Washington, D.C.," argues that more and more DC hams are getting on the air - and if DC isn't a mult - then contests like NAQP will suffer.
"Most recently, 8 stations were active in the ARRL 10 meter contest," Rosenberg argued in his latest NAQP appeal. The ARRL 10 is one that uses the DC mult, along with CQ 160 and ARRL DX to name a few.
"At a time when the contesting community expresses concern about the low levels of participation, it seems only logical that the NAQP management add a heretofore disenfranchised group," said Rosenberg, "those of us who, like me, will not participate because we don't live in Maryland."
