VA QSO Party

[Ray Albers]

I thought conditions were pretty poor (I'll use that as my excuse anyway).

Early on, I decided to do only 40 meter CW.

154 Q's plus about 4 Dupes. Years ago an experienced contester advised me that if I'm running and someone calls me and it's a Dupe, just go ahead and work him.

Score = 18480.  32 VA Counties/Cities, 28 Sections.

Maybe next year will be better.

73

Ray K2HYD

[Jim Clymer]

Hats off to you, Ray. From my tiny corner of God's green earth, condx were far worse than "pretty poor." With the low TOA of my antennas, I had no trouble working stations 1000+ miles out, but the gound wave wasn't strong enough to even hear most of the activity from the VA stations.

I had an amazing 35 Qs, with a whopping 4 stations in VA!

73,

Jim - WS6X 

[Ray Albers]

Thanks Jim!  Hmm, unless Butch weighs in with a high single band CW score, maybe I'll get some sort of RHM County certificate!

Ray 

[Butch Washer]

Nope… nothing from me… we had too much going on here for me to hey on…

Hopefully the next contest…

Butch N5SMQ

Sent from my iPhone

On Mar 24, 2026, at 12:23 PM, Ray Albers <raya...@gmail.com> wrote:



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[Jeff Rinehart]

W4PJW Report:

The Virginia QSO party was pretty much a big disappointment for me this year.  I did make nearly 200 Qso's but they were difficult.  46 Virginia Counties/Citys.

The morning hours of Saturday brought some good results after the sun got pretty high in the sky.  By lunch time though the bands nearly died so I gave up but returned later in the day to find the bands hopping. I even made some SSB Q's - once I found my headset and refreshed myself on how to set things up for SSB.

I did make a few local Q's - AD4TJ, N3XA and K2HYD.  Also worked some other locals NX3A, WD4GEK and W4EHC.   There may have been other locals too - sorry I missed you.

 Sunday morning everything seemed dead so I just gave up for the day and enjoyed normal activities - other than radio.

Till next year,

Jeff Rinehart   W4PJW

https://www.qrz.com/db/W4PJW

[David Tanks]

    Good jobs, Jeff and Ray! Worked both of you, Jeff on 40 and 80, Ray on 40.

    Also caught Randy N3XA and Corey N4CWJ on 40 SSB.  

   Conditions were mostly terrible! I did manage to work OM2VL on 40 and 80, 

  and F5PGA on 20. Did a lot of CQing, and used the QSO party website to find

  a few multipliers. N1MM says I worked 36 Counties/Cities in 6 hours 21 minutes.

  I ran Single Op, High Power, Assisted, All bands, Fixed. TS-2000X, KPA-500 at

  150 to 350 watts into the TA-33 at 20' and the 17' tall Inverted L. Still had 

  trouble working some even with the power I was running. Gave up Saturday

  night at 10 pm, then Sunday had church, so I was very limited. Interesting 

  calls worked: AD4J, K1ZZI, N4EMP, N4FRS. Not sure N1MM scored this contest

  properly, due to the Bonus Station fiasco, so will have to wait and see what 

  the contest robot does to my claimed score.

    

   

  Hmm, N1MM shows I worked 3 countries outside of US and VE, but I can

  only account for the OM and F5 stations after looking through the log 3 times.

  Hoping for better condx next year!

   Wonder how many other valley guys used Shenandoah Valley Wireless on 

  their entries? I did see Norm KN4YFI on Contest Online Scoreboard,

  

  David AD4TJ

   

On Wednesday, March 25, 2026, 'Jeff Rinehart' via Valley Hams <valle...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

W4PJW Report:

The Virginia QSO party was pretty much a big disappointment for me this year. I did make 

 nearly 200 Qso's but they were difficult. 46 Virginia Counties/Cities.

The morning hours of Saturday brought some good results after the sun got pretty high 

 in the sky. By lunch time though the bands nearly died so I gave up but returned later in

 the day to find the bands hopping. I even made some SSB Q's - once I found my headset 

 and refreshed myself on how to set things up for SSB.

I did make a few local Q's - AD4TJ, N3XA and K2HYD.  Also worked some other locals 

NX3A, WD4GEK and W4EHC. There may have been other locals too - sorry I missed you.

 Sunday morning everything seemed dead so I just gave up for the day and enjoyed normal activities - other than radio.

Till next year,

Jeff Rinehart   W4PJW

https://www.qrz.com/db/W4PJW

On Tuesday, March 24, 2026, Butch Washer <n5s...@gmail.com> wrote:

Nope… nothing from me… we had too much going on here for me to hey on…

Hopefully the next contest…

Butch N5SMQ

Sent from my iPhone

On Mar 24, 2026, Ray Albers <raya...@gmail.com> wrote:

Thanks Jim!  Hmm, unless Butch weighs in with a high single band CW score, maybe I'll get some sort of RHM County certificate!

Ray 

On Tue, Mar 24, 2026, Jim Clymer <ws6x...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hats off to you, Ray. From my tiny corner of God's green earth, condx were far worse than "pretty poor." With the low TOA of my antennas, I had no trouble working stations 1000+ miles out, but the gound wave wasn't strong enough 

to even hear most of the activity from the VA stations. I had an amazing 35 Qs, with a whopping 4 stations in VA!

73,

Jim - WS6X