WQ6X Works another disappointing triple-QSO Party weekend

Every radiosport weekend I begin with high hopes that station participation will give us something
to work with.  Unfortunately most QSO parties (CQP excepted) seriously lack in-state participation. 
All too often there are 10x the number of operators looking for QSO party participants than there are actual participants in that state.

It could be said that just because I can't hear them doesn't mean that they aren't on the air, only
that I can't hear them.  However, I would think that if there ARE stations calling CQ during a given QSO party, their callsign would show up on one or more spotting networks.  This weekend, switching thru numerous servers resulted in no more than a handful of station spots during the QSO party operation periods.

The Ohio QSO Party (OHQP) offers us only 12 hours to work them.  With an event ending time
of 04:00z, 40-meters is just barely reliably open to Ohio, while 80 meters may well not have even opened to Ohio yet.  Saturday evening, I heard Ohio operators calling KH6 stations (in HQP), while neglecting their own QSO party.  

Calling CQ OHQP/KSQP/HQP throughout the QSO party periods resulted in 0 replies to those calls.  Even CQ calls for the YO DX contest were a No-Go.  For Hawaii, all but one of the 8 QSOs made was on Cw; where were the Ssb stations?  Sunday afternoon a KH6 station was heard ragchewing with a DX station on 14.319, however he was NoT part of the HQP event; I get the impression he didn't even know about the HQP event.

Also this weekend was the YO HF Dx contest, a Cw & Ssb GiG.  While I gather EU stations found HUNDREDS of stations to work, only 2 signals (a PA & a PC station) were heard in Concord, not on 20-meters, but amazingly enough on 40; unfortunately with one-way propagation.  While we are allowed to work non-EU stations (for less points) in this event, only K0ZR made it to the eventually 1-QSO log.  No matter how paltry the score, I always post a 3830 score and submit a log to the contest event sponsor.

While an SFI of 78 hardly helped, the bottom-line was very FEW callsign spots from stations ANYWHERE during the 4 events.  Eventually the SFI jumped to 92, accompanied by K-Index=5.  Several events had a provision for digital signals however while there were FT8 signals (which I can't decode) on most bands, no RTTY signals were heard.  Bummer DEWD.

Also during the weekend was the W.W. digital contest, as well as the US/VE Islands GiG, both with virtually no participation activity.  In recent years, I've yet to encounter any activity in the US/VE Island GiG - HuH?  Wassup with that?

In summary, this Blog entry summarizes my ongoing complaint that there is not enough in-state participation in most QSO parties, nor is there much in the way of USA participation in EU-style
Dx contests.  

For QSO parties, what is the point of getting our hopes up by hosting a QSO party when most stations in your state don't participate?  What propels the California QSO Party (CQP) to the ToP
of the list is that it is a HIGHLY organized event with HUNDREDS of California stations activating
ALL 58 California counties.  I wrote about this problem EXACTLY 1-Year ago. 
([CLICK HERE] to read that Blog.)

In order for radiosport events to work, operators must plan/prepare well in advance to make
it all happen.  For every radiosport event I have a band plan laid out in advance, and for CQP
I even publish that plan in the WQ6X.Info/CQP web section.

DiD YOU work the state QSO parties this last weekend?

Is WQ6X in YOUR Log?