I had a blast on the Collegiate QSO Party, but it’s not shown in my score. As one of the event organizers, I just wanted to have fun with it. I made it a goal to only work school and try and spot as many as I could.
I spent most of the weekend monitoring social media and seeing what the 37 participating schools posted. This was a record year for school participation and it was a ton of fun to see spots popping up online and all the conversation. I had my radio going as well and got to hear a few folks make their first QSOs, which was a ton of fun. I also enjoyed listening to the pileups.
When things did calm down, I did try to get in a few QSOs. While I spent a lot of time on voice, I took advantage of the generally slower CW speeds to try my first QSOs! I was happy to make two: W4ODU, Old Dominion University, and W9HHX, Milwaukee School of Engineering. I was able to head copy all of the exchange. There was a lot of noise when I went to work W9HHX, but we made it happen! I had to send my exchange a few times for him to copy.
With 189 claimed points, I’ll take that. It was a good bit of fun and I got to make some unique contacts.
We are just a week after the event, but I already have seen over 20 logs submitted with 50% being from individuals. This was a super exciting year and I cant wait to start processing logs. It will be a few months before we have our winners announced, but I cannot wait for next year!