QSO in amateur radio talk refers to a conversation or contact between 2 stations. A QSO Party refers to a contest where an amateur radio operator or club station try to make as many contacts as possible during a limited amount of time.

The OHIO QSO PARTY was designed for this purpose ... to have fun, make lots of contacts, and give out lots of county contacts. Since the USS JURASSIC HQ is in Brown county, Ohio (yellow on the map below), we decided to participate in the OHIO QSO PARTY the weekend of March 20 - 21.

The OHIO QSO PARTY lasted for 48 hours -- beginning at 0001 UTC time on March 20th, and ending at 2359 UTC time on March 21st (that translates to starting at 7 p.m. on March 19th and running until 6:59 p.m. March 21st local EST). Three members of the USS JURASSIC participated in the contest. Gary (WB8NLL) did most of the logging, while Carolyn (KC8KBF) did most of the talking. And to our great delight, Garry (VE7ACM) managed to get through the pileup to give us a boost and a few points. We used the club call (KC8LEY) for the entire contest, and were able to make contact with 199 stations during that time. Of course we didn't operate for the full 48 hours straight through. We took time out to sleep and eat. :-) I'd say we worked about 25 - 30 hours all together. Our contacts included the following:

• 32 Ohio stations
• 41 States in the US (that includes Ohio)
• 9 Canadian stations
• 4 Foreign countries (Canada, Jamaica, Netherlands, and Germany)

The contest is scored like this: You get 2 points for each station worked. Then because it is the "OHIO" QSO Party, you take your score and multiply it by the number of counties in OHIO that you worked (only one multiplier per county no matter how many people you worked in a particular county). On the map above the counties we worked are shown in the colors. We worked 23 in all, with one special county (Franklin County -- containing Columbus, the capital city of Ohio) counting as two multipliers. (Franklin county is in red on the map). That made 24 as the multiplier for our score. The score looks like this:

• 199 contacts x 2 points each = 398 points.
• 398 points x 24 (the multiplier for counties) = 9,552 points total.

This was our first time to be involved in the OHIO QSO PARTY, so I don't know if that is a good score or not. We'll just have to wait and see. :-)

It was a fun weekend. By the end of the 48 hours, Gary's back was sore from sitting at the computer for so long, and Carolyn's throat was sore from talking so much. But we met some really interesting people from all over the world, and even managed to talk about the club and Star Trek a little from time to time. <grin>

And we won first place for Brown County, Ohio. Here's a copy of the certificate ...