Virginia QSO Party 2025

TVDXA · Virginia QSO Party 2025 · K4VIG · Wythe County, VA · Reported by Ted W4NZ

This was the 10th anniversary of our participation in the Virginia QSO Party. Held March 15–16, it is sponsored by the Sterling Park Amateur Radio Club of Loudoun County. The annual 5-hour trek to the Sand Mountain Hunting Club lodge — on a mountainside in Wythe County near Speedwell, up I-81 beyond Bristol off the Rural Retreat exit — has become a tradition. Gary K4VIG, a long-time member of the lodge, always makes sure we have permission to use the facilities. Thank you, Gary!

A QSO Party is a specialty contest sponsored by an organization within a state or region to activate counties — and, in Virginia's case, independent cities — that may not have many radio amateurs. These are highly sought by awards chasers worldwide.

With two transmitters and four operators, we entered the multi-operator, multi-transmitter, fixed-station, low-power category ("low power" being 150 watts or less). This year's crew was Gary K4VIG, Bill W4XK, Paul WA4AA, and Billy KE4CMA, operating under Gary's well-known VAQP call, K4VIG.

Internet access is now available at the lodge, letting us use spotting networks to help our score, and on Friday we had time to activate three Parks On The Air locations. The contest itself, though, was a series of adventures: Saturday's computer networking gave us fits and a late start, but we still had about 700 QSOs by the end of the day. Sunday brought firewall problems and then a 7-hour power outage from about 2:00 PM until the party ended at 8:00 PM. Billy saved the day by cooking a delicious beef roast — potatoes, carrots, and onions — on the wood stove, and we enjoyed dinner by candlelight until the power returned around 9:00 PM. As Howard said last year, "Even after 9 years, EVERY YEAR is exciting, unique and memorable!"

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Stations & Antennas

The two antennas are normally left in place year-round, supported by ropes from the trees around the lodge at a good height of 40 to 55 feet. This year they needed some maintenance, as recent storms had taken a toll on the support ropes and feedlines.

Each station had a laptop for rig control and contest logging with N1MM Logger+, networked through a local wireless router provided by Bill W4XK.

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Band & Mode Summary

Band	Mode	QSOs	Mults
80m	CW	53	0
80m	SSB	53	2
40m	CW	109	3
40m	SSB	152	57
20m	CW	211	53
20m	SSB	181	11
15m	CW	43	3
15m	SSB	12	0
Totals		802	129

We worked 44 states (missing only Alaska, Hawaii, South Dakota, Idaho, Nevada, and Utah), 7 Canadian provinces (Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Newfoundland, Ontario, and Quebec), and 4 DXCC entities (France, England, Lithuania, and the Slovak Republic). In Virginia we worked 75 of the possible 133 counties and independent cities. Of our 802 QSOs, 580 were unique calls (we also removed 33 duplicates).

Virginia isn't the only QSO Party — there's the Georgia QSO Party in April, Field Day in June, and the Tennessee QSO Party in September. Why do we make these trips? Simply because it's fun — and the fellowship and food aren't bad either. We hope you'll join us next time.

Photo highlights: the lodge, Paul WA4AA and Billy KE4CMA at the mic, Gary K4VIG, the POTA outing at Big Survey WMA, and Bill W4XK off duty. See the full photo gallery →

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TVDXA VAQP Scores

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