WQ6X September Radiosport Dabbling a BiG Disappointment

While this last weekend offered 7 radiosport events of interest to me, when it was all over I ended
up with 1.2 events that actually went anywhere.  Unfortunately, this is hardly the first September weekend that has been like that.  According to the WA7BNM contest calendar, here are the
events I was looking to participate in:

1. [x] Collegiate QSO Party
2. [x] Scandinavian Cw Contest
3. [x] All Africa Contest
4. [x] Iowa QSP Party (IAQP)
5. [x] New Hampshire QSO Party (NHQP)
6. [x] New Jersey QSO Party (NJQP)
7. [x] Washing State Salmon Run (formerly WAQP)

For starters, we have the Collegiate QSO party.  I believe this was the 2nd running of this event; same as last year, where was the collegiate station activity?  Last years event write up in QST surprised me as I heard NO stations calling CQ for this event.  This year was a duplicate. 
It's not nice to get us excited about your event and then no one can be heard. 
Am I missing something?

The Scandinavian GiG was another disappointment.  Other than a few weak OH (Finland) stations,
no workable signals made it to Fallbrook.  There were dozens of spots but virtually 99% we from W9,
W8 and W1 locations - Bummer Dewd.  As I say every year about this Gig, "wait 'til next year".

From the Waste Coast, Africa is the most difficult continent to work.  Not only did I hear NO Africa stations, there were no bandmap spots either - Double Bummer Dewd.

The Iowa QSO party had possibilities except I was in conference much of the day.  By the time I got on the air (23:00z), nothing was heard from Iowa.  Lemme see if I understand this - y'all advertise
a QSO party, don't play in your own QSO party and then QUIT (02:00z) just as 40 and 80 are
opening to your state.  HuH?  At LEAST give us another shot at Iowa on Sunday like they do
in New Hampshire and Washington.

New Hampshire, New Jersey and Washington state all began their party events at 16:00z. 
Other than Washington stations, one WB2 guy in New Jersey made it to the log.  New Hampshire was not heard; even in Part 2 of the NHQP GiG on Sunday, no "1" stations were heard; much less worked.
How many dozen times each year do I have to bitch about vacant state QSO party activity before y'all get the message and start putting your counties on the air?

That leaves us with the Washington state Salmon Run (formerly the WAQP).  In May of course we have the 7QP QSO party, however in September, the Washingtonians go it alone, and do a pretty good job doing it.  Next to the California QSO party (CQP), Washington's Salmon run is the best single-state QSO party around; and, being on the Northwest coast, we Californians have a near-perfect skip shot at all those 7-Land callsigns.

Aside from my usual beef about poor in-state turnout, my only other disappointment with the S-R contest was lack of ROVER stations.  In other QSO parties I am used to working stations who are "straddling" 2, 3 & 4 county lines; we callers get more points per visit.  Of the 70 QSOs I made,
only NU7J handed out two counties at once - Bummer Dewd.

The real bottom-line of this weekend for WQ6X was the opportunity to troubleshoot different

network configuration settings for the Elecraft K3/0 equipment.  Only after it was all over than it

was discovered that my copy of VNC Viewer is horribly out of date.  Updating to Version 6 made a HuGe difference.  If you are a VNC user and haven't moved out of Version 5x, you are missing out.

Now that I have the K3/0 and laptop software updated, the next stop is a Dual-OP this
coming weekend of CQ W.W. RTTY, remote from Fallbrook and live from W7AYT in Concord.

Do YOU do RTTY?
Are YOU gonna play in the CQ W.W. RTTY GiG ??
I hope so - we BOTH need the points.