The Georgia QSO Party is sponsored by the South East Contest Club and the Southeastern DX Club, and is held the 2nd weekend of April each year — this year on April 13–14. It was our first time traveling to a Georgia location for the GQP. Thanks to the efforts of Kenny Rogers K4KR, we operated from the Rising Fawn Community Center in Rising Fawn, Georgia, about a 45-minute drive down I-59 from Chattanooga.
A QSO Party is a specialty contest sponsored by an organization within a state or region to activate counties — and, in some states, independent cities — that may not normally see much amateur radio activity. These counties are highly sought by awards chasers.
We entered the multi-operator, two-transmitter, fixed-station, low-power category. Our operators were Gary K4VIG, Bill W4XK, Paul WA4AA, Kenny K4KR, Karen KX4KM, Peter KX4BE, Howard WB4ZBI, and Ted W4NZ, operating under the TVDXA club call, N4LT.
The Community Center's dining hall met our needs nicely — power for the radios, restrooms, a kitchen, and plenty of tables, with windows that opened to bring in the feed lines. Being a new location, arranging the two antennas to minimize inter-station interference was a challenge; both were strung on ropes between trees around the property. Station 1's antenna (yellow on the photo) ran across the drive and over the building, about 35–40 feet up. Station 2's (red) was an inverted-V with its apex 35–40 feet up, the legs 20–25 feet. The feed points ended up far enough apart that inter-station interference was minimal.
Stations & Antennas
| Station | Provided By | Radio | Antenna |
|---|---|---|---|
| Station 1 | K4VIG | FlexRadio 6600M | 80M multiband dipole, ladder line via Johnson Matchbox |
| Station 2 | W4NZ | FlexRadio 6600M | 80M multiband dipole, ladder line via Johnson Matchbox |
Each station had a laptop for rig control and contest logging with N1MM Logger+, all networked through a local wireless router so every QSO appeared on each computer in real time.
Band & Mode Summary
| Band | Mode | QSOs | Mults |
|---|---|---|---|
| 80m | CW | 75 | 0 |
| 75m | SSB | 39 | 13 |
| 40m | CW | 242 | 10 |
| 40m | SSB | 108 | 10 |
| 20m | CW | 216 | 35 |
| 20m | SSB | 128 | 12 |
| 15m | CW | 15 | 1 |
| 10m | CW | 5 | 0 |
| Totals | 828 | 81 |
828 QSOs · 81 multipliers · multi-op, 2-transmitter, low power
We worked 43 states (missing only Alaska, Hawaii, Nevada, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, and Vermont), 6 Canadian provinces (AB, BC, MB, NS, ON, QC), and 13 DXCC entities (DL, EA, F, HA, HB, HC, JA, KP4, LA, LY, OH, OM, SP). Of the 828 QSOs, 575 were unique call signs (we also removed 30 duplicates).
Thanks to the good people of Rising Fawn for letting us use their facilities — we had a lot of fun and hope to do it again. There are more photos on our TVDXA Facebook page.
| U.S. states | 43 — missed AK, HI, NV, ND, SD, UT, VT |
| Canada | 6 provinces (AB, BC, MB, NS, ON, QC) |
| DXCC | 13 entities |
| Unique calls | 575 of 828 (30 duplicates removed) |
K4VIG · W4XK · WA4AA · K4KR · KX4KM · KX4BE · WB4ZBI · W4NZ
Photo highlights: the Rising Fawn Community Center, the dining-hall operating area, and the crew at the stations. See the full photo gallery →
About the Georgia QSO Party
The Georgia QSO Party is held the 2nd full weekend of April and is co-sponsored by the South East Contest Club and the Southeastern DX Club. See the TVDXA GQP event page or visit gaqsoparty.com.