2024 Idaho QSO Party

Results

Jay and I were able to put 10 of our planned 12 counties on the air missing only Shoshone and Benewah counties.  We made 439 Qs with 44 multipliers for an N1MM+ claimed score of 38,632, but that does not include the two bonus Qs with N7U nor the bonus for making 10 or more Qs in each of Gem, Payette, and Washington counties.  The band breakdown was 12 Qs on 80, 140 Qs on 40, 186 Qs on 20, 86 Qs on 15, and 15 Qs on 10 m.

Our most frequent customer was OM2VL, Laci, with 13 Qs.  Laci always makes several Qs when we are mobile in the various QSO Parties.  K9CW, Drew, in IL was next with 10 Qs followed closely by KA6BIM, Dave, in OR, and WB9HFK, Mark in IL with 9 each.  In total we had Qs with 219 unique calls.

Our best county was Idaho county with 91 Qs where our route was 95 miles long with over half of those miles in a rather deep canyon.  The lowest QSO count was in Valley county with only 18 Qs.  This county is a quick in and back out the same route with a stop to make for 30 minues of operating time in the county.  It is always a low QSO count county.

The mobile was 2002 Ford Ranger with a KX2 and a KXPA at 100 W to a Scorpioni 680 antenna mounted in the center of the truck's bed.  Logging wa done with a 14" screen HP laptop running N1MM+.

Jay and I thank everyone who worked us and those who tried, but we didn't get you in the log.

Pictures and comments from along the route.


We are in Adams county near the small town of Mesa.  There is snow on the distant mountain, but the roads are clear and the weather is fine.  We have a total of 129 Qs.

This is our operating spot in Valley county.  Payette Lake is frozen over and snow covered just beyond the trees.  Our QSO count is up to 189.

The sun is setting on us in Lewis county.  We've stopped for a short time at the edge of the town of Craigmont and we are up to 314 Qs.

We are at our final operating spot in Clearwater county.  That is snow at the edge of the turnout.  Randy is at the keyboard.  We collected 26 Qs here.

The Plan

Jay, WA0WWW, and I will activate twelve counties in the ID QSO Party on March 9 and 10 (UTC) using my call of K7TQ.  All of our operation will be CW.  We will start in three of the IDQP Bonus Counties, Gem (GEM), Payette (PAY), and Washington (WAS) then head north to end in Latah county.  We will try to split our operating time between 20 and 40 m with extensions to 15 and possibly 10 m.  Our sunset will be 0150 UTC so we will concentrate more on 40 and some 80 after that.  You can work us each time we change counties or bands.  Watch the RBN for K7TQ.  We will try to be on frequencies ending in 0635, such as 14.0365 or 15.0365 MHz.

Here is a schedule of when we hope to enter and leave each county plus a map of Idaho counties with ours's color coded.

Saturday, March 9, 2024 (UTC)

Sunday, March 10, 2024 (UTC)