Vermont QSO Party [CW,Phone,Digital | 160,80,40,20,15,10,+]

The 65th Vermont QSO Party will take place during the first full weekend of February 2023.

It will begin at 0000 UTC Saturday February 4 and will end at 2400 UTC Sunday February 5, which is a 48-hour period.

In local time, this corresponds to a start time of 7:00 PM EST FRIDAY night February 3rd and an end time of 7PM SUNDAY night February 5th.

The VERMONT QSO PARTY provides the opportunity for Amateur Radio Operators to contact and exchange QSO information with Vermont Amateur Radio operators. All licensed amateur radio operators are invited to participate. Stations outside Vermont work Vermont stations. Stations within Vermont work everyone.

The discussion below is a summary of the QSO Party. Please download The Official 2023 Vermont QSO Party Rules for specific rules.

BEFORE THE QSO PARTY!!

MAKE SURE you have set up working software which will generate the correct log format. Only Cabrillo format logs are acceptable. Logs in text or ADIF format are NOT acceptable and will be returned.

State QSO Party Challenge

The annual State QSO Party Challenge recognizes all radio amateurs’ participation in the U.S. State and Canadian Province QSO parties. It is open to any radio amateur who participates in any of the approved State QSO Parties. Participants must simply submit their scores to 3830Scores.com to be included in the Challenge. Go to stateqsoparty.com for full details.

FT8 and FT4

The Vermont QSO Party will include and encourage operation on the WSJT digital modes of FT8, FT4 and others. However, these modes only encode the station’s GRID SQUARE and not state, province or county. For these modes, special rules come into play:

Stations can only count once per band for credit on digital modes. That is, if you work a station on both FT8 and RTTY on a particular band, it only counts once.
The number of FT8/FT4 multipliers (for Vermont stations) is the number of grid squares worked, divided by 3 and rounded DOWN. (this is a change from 2019-2021)
The number of FT8/FT4 multipliers (for outside Vermont stations) is the number of grid squares worked in Vermont (maximum of 5).
If an FT8/FT4 station does not send its grid square, it can count for QSO credit, but not for grid square credit.
Digital contacts on modes not using grid squares (RTTY & PSK-31) will use states and countries as multipliers. Other stations must send their state or province to count for credit.
In addition to the suggested frequencies listed below, FT8/FT4 contacts can also be made ONLY on the recognized FT8/FT4 frequencies of 10.136/10.140, 18.110/18.104 and 24.920/24.919 MHz upper side band. No other forms of activity are allowed on 30, 17 and 12 meters.
The WSJTx software generates an ADIF file for FT8/FT4 contacts but a Cabrillo file is required. If you made FT8 contacts, when you upload your log, you can upload the ADIF file out of WSJTx in addition to your Cabrillo log and the robot will convert the ADIF and merge it into your Cabrillo log. This is a lot easier than in the past! MAKE SURE you only upload the portion of your WSJTx ADIF corresponding to the QSO Party (i.e. February 4-5, 2023). You will have to provide your correct Grid Square. If you did not make FT8 QSO’s, then ignore this on the upload page. If you use the N1MM logging software, there is a way to marry the logging software to WSJTx for a seemless operation. Go to N1MM-WSJTx to learn how to do this. Note that this process is rather lengthy and definitely should not be attempted 5 minutes before the start of the QSO Party!

Example:
You work 43 grid squares on FT8 and 6 states on RTTY. Your total number of digital grids is determined in this manner:
43 grids / 3 = 14.33 which is rounded down to 14 multipliers. Add to this the number of states on RTTY. Your total number of digital multipliers will be 14 + 6 = 20. Remember that you are determining number of multiplers across all digital modes, regardless of bands. The contest manager will compute the correct number of multipliers, if you have difficulty.

Most Vermont stations can be found in the FN34 and FN33 grid squares. Small pieces of Vermont also lie in FN32, FN44 and FN35. The contest manager will determine which FT8/FT4 contacts are valid Vermont contacts. Remember that stations outside of Vermont can only work Vermont stations for credit. Although not an exhaustive list, these are the Vermont stations most likely to be on FT8/FT4: AA1SU, K1BIF, KB1FRW, KC1IFK, KI1P, KK1L, N1GB, N1FS, N1GVT, N1JEZ, NQ1B, W1BD, W1FP, W1JXN, W1NVT.

EXCHANGE

Vermont stations send signal report and Vermont county. U.S. and Canada stations send signal report and state or province. DX stations send signal report. FT8 contacts will exchange signal reports in dB and grid square.

SCORING

Points
Stations can be worked on multiple bands and multiple modes.

Phone: 1 pt
CW: 2 pts
Digital: 2 pts
All digital modes (RTTY, PSK, Packet) count as ONE Mode)

Multipliers
Multipliers count ONLY ONCE PER MODE. Multipliers consist of:

50 U.S. States
12 Canadian Provinces and Territories (see list below)
Any ARRL DXCC country (except U.S. Canada, Alaska, Hawaii)
14 Vermont Counties (see list below)
Specific Vermont Club Stations
Grid squares divided by 3 only for for FT8 and other WSJT modes.

Vermont stations can use all of the above for multipliers.
Stations outside Vermont can only count Vermont Counties and Vermont Club Stations and Vermont grid squares on FT8.

Club Station Multipliers
Only approved Vermont Club Stations will count as multipliers. A club operation must inform the QSO Party Chairman no later than one week before the contest. A club operation must commit to operating at least 5 hours duing the event. Stations using their own call sign may not then use a club call sign to give out a multiplier.
Valid club multipliers for 2023: W1NVT and N1GVT. Be extra cautious to not mix these similar callsigns up!>

Power Multiplier

High Power	over 150w	x 1.0
Low Power	over 5w, under 150w	x 1.5
QRP	under 5w	x 2.0

Final Score is QSO Points times multipliers times power multiplier.

LOG CHECKING

Be sure to log all contacts accurately!
A busted callsign, incorrect exchange (state, province, country, county) or incorrect band/mode will all result in a contact being removed. Be sure to use the specific VT QSO County abbreviations and NOT abbreviations from other contests (some are different). Duplicate contacts will not be counted.

SUGGESTED FREQUENCIES AND TIMES

Phone: 80-15 meters: the first 25 kHz of the General portion of each band, 1850-1875 KHz, 28.400-28.425 MHz.

CW: 50 kHz from the bottom edge of each band.

VHF: 50.130 MHz SSB, 144.200 MHz SSB, 146.520 MHz FM.

USE OF SPOTTING NETWORKS

Participants in the Vermont QSO Party may use spotting networks to find activity or to announce activity. Please be reasonable in using the networks.

VERMONT ACTIVITY HOURS

Vermont activity hours have been scheduled to allow Vermont stations to find each other. Please check these frequencies, as it is rough to work each other on 20m days and 40m nights. These have changed from past years due to changing band conditions.

Sat 0000-0015Z	Fri 7PM ET	7200 KHz
Sat 0100-0115Z	Fri 8PM ET	3850 KHz
Sat 1800-1815Z	Sat 1PM ET	7200 KHz
Sun 0000-0015Z	Sat 7PM ET	7200 KHz
Sun 0100-0115Z	Sat 8PM ET	3850 KHz
Sun 1800-1815Z	Sun 1PM ET	7200 KHz
Sun 2345-0000Z	Sun 6:45PM	7200 KHz

2023 Schedules for selected Vermont stations

W1NVT (CHI) (FN34) [bonus multiplier] will be primarily on SSB throughout the entire contest
Sat 0000-0300   Fri 7-10 PM   40/80M
Sat 0300-0500   Fri 10-midn   FT8
Sat 1300-2400   Sat 8AM-7PM   20/15/10M
Sun 0000-0300   Sat 7-10PM    40/80M
Sun 0300-0500   Sat 10-midn   FT8
Sun 1300-2400   Sun 8AM-7PM   20/15/10M

There will also be CW and FT8 activity at various times. Be sure to check the cluster.

N1GVT (CHI) (FN34) [bonus multiplier] will be on CW and phone throughout the entire contest.

KK1L  (CHI (FN34) will be mostly on phone with some CW and FT8.

AA1SU (CHI) (FN34) will be on phone and FT8 in the evenings.

N1CFO (CHI)  (FN34) WILL be on phone and CW all weekend. 

KE1VT (ADD) (FN34) will be phone and CW all weekend.

N1SP (BENN) (FN32) will be mostly on CW.

K1IB (Rover) will be exclusively on CW and will activate county lines including: Windsor, Rutland, Orange, Washington and Caledonia.
He will try to focus on the higher bands, 10 and 15 meters, during the day. 
When he is on a county line, but sure to log him TWICE, once for each county he announces. 



More info will be provided as we learn about it.

Be sure to check the cluster for activity.

REPORTING

On-Line Submission. VTQSO logs should submitted on line at this site: https://www.b4h.net/vtqp/vtqpsubmitlog.php.
You will be asked to provide an email address, category (single-op or multi-op) and power level (5/150/1500). You then will select the file containing your log.Contest log must be in Cabrillo Format! Most contest software will produce this for you. The log must be in chronological order, from earliest QSO to latest QSO. Both N1MM and N3FJP (the paid version only) will support the Vermont QSO Party. Other software is “USE AT YOUR OWN RISK”!The robot will quickly scan your log and either accept it or report errors. You can then modify your log file to fix the problems and resubmit the log.NOTE DEADLINE OF 2 WEEKS!! The deadline for all submissions is February 19, 2023 at 2359 UTC or 6:59 PM EST.
Postal Mail. We strongly, strongly encourage all participants to submit logs electronically!! However, paper contest logs will be accepted via postal mail to: Vermont QSO Party, PO Box 9392, South Burlington, VT 05403-9392. PAPER LOGS MUST BE POSTMARKED NO LATER THAN FEBRUARY 19 TO BE CONSIDERED. When submitting paper logs, please include summary sheet and dupe sheets

Any software which automatically looks up call sign addresses is NOT to be used and any logs submitted in this format are not acceptable (Ham Radio Deluxe and N3FJP have this feature and it MUST be turned off!) Participants are expected to COPY ALL pertinent contest exchange information! If you have questions or issues with contest software, contact the Contest Manager at the above address, BEFORE the QSO Party.

DON’T E-MAIL LOGS directly, as these are no longer accepted.

AWARDS

The 3 highest single operator scorers outside Vermont but within the U.S. will receive a 3 oz. miniature jug of genuine Vermont Maple Syrup!
The top scorers in each category from Vermont and each category outside Vermont will receive a certificate.
Stations outside Vermont making 20 or more Vermont contacts will receive a certificate. (change from last year(
Stations in Vermont making 100 or more contacts will receive a certficate.
Results will be published on this site within 60-90 days after the end of the QSO Party