2022 Idaho QSO Party Thoughts and Statistics  ---  By the Idaho QSO Party Coordinator

I have never been a contester but I have to say after parking on a 20 meter frequency this year and calling CQ IDQP I’m afraid I may be hooked. 
There is nothing like calling CQ a couple of times and then handling a pileup for the next two hours.  For a non-contester like myself that can be a
scary proposition.  The thought kept going through my mind, “what in the world have I gotten myself into?”  But I kept going and the longer I
went the more fun it got.  By the time the Party ended I wanted it to go longer.  I think it’s a given that I’ll be doing the same thing next year.

Twenty meters was my bread-and-butter band where I made probably 90 percent of my contacts on Saturday.  Sunday was a different story. 
It just didn’t happen.  But I still made some contacts.  You can never tell what O’l Saul is going to do with propagation. 

We received a total of 376 logs this year.  Here are some statistics:

Idaho stations participating:  48
Other states:  47
Canadian Provinces: 4
DX:  11

Three states did not show up in any logs this year:  Alaska, Hawaii and Rhode Island.  Maybe next year!

Last year we got several “soapbox” remarks wondering where all the Idaho CW stations were.  I put out a call
to Idaho operators to try to work some CW.  We never got ANY remarks about missing Idaho CW ops this year. 
I will take that as a compliment.

Total phone QSOs was 6861, total CW QSOs was 6354  and total DIGI QSOs was 97.  So Idaho ops handed out
a lot of IDQP points this year.  I want to say a big hearty THANK-YOU to all who participated this year.

We changed the scoring process this year.  Jim Larson KK7A wrote a computer program in Windows Powershell
that takes the Cabrillo logs, runs them through the program and scores the log.  I take the log and record it in a spreadsheet
I developed that gets the results ready for sorting and parsing so we can find the winners and get things posted on the IDQP Info site. 
John Wilson KØIP then posts the results on the web site.  The ability to let the computers do the work this year reduced a lot of work
hours into mere minutes!  It was a milestone for us working behind the scenes!  My thanks to Jim for developing this log
scoring process and John for posting the results and answering all my stupid questions.

We have been discussing the possibility of changing the name for next year and after talking with many Idaho hams about the
idea it looks to be a “go.”  We want to somehow incorporate the Idaho Potato or Idaho Spud into the name.  We want to promote
our Idaho resource and have a clever name at the same time so look for this change next year.  We still haven’t decided on an exact
name yet but it will still incorporate QSO Party so no one should get lost.

From the sponsor, Magic Valley Amateur Radio Club, thanks again to all the operators – Idaho, out of state, DX, Canada – who
participated in the 2022 Idaho QSO Party.  We hope to see you all next year.

73,

Kelly Klaas K7SU
Idaho QSO Party Coordinator

=========== Now the Scores                    

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