What makes CQP Different? - Part 1

Of all the state QSO parties, the
CQP California QSO Party is by far
the top QSO Party event of the year;
not JUST because I am [born-and-bred] Californian, but because CQP's overall layout, structure and execution are FAR Beyond the other QSO Parties.

(If I were going to design a QSO
Party, CQP would be the overall
"best model" for me to work from.)

CQP is the only QSO Party that replaces the worthless BOR-ing 5-9/5-9-9 JUNK with a Serial #.  This allows us to gauge how far along other stations are, inviting competition amongst friends. 


RTTY enthusiasts may recognize this EXCHG as the one also used in January's worldwide
RTTY Roundup (RTTY RU) contest.  Requiring a Serial # relieves some of the monotony of
sending 5-9-9 all the time, replacing it with something that requires the operator to "THINGK". 
You may remember my Blog in July asking for the death of 5-9 & 5-9-9.  I gave several things
the 5-9/599 could be replaced with; one of them being a Serial #, similar to the RTTY RU GiGs.

An advantage California has is only 58 counties to work.  A California disadvantage is that the state
is geographically so HUGE that setting up rover stations to visit a LoT of counties is all but impossible; all except K6AQL/M who has mapped out a road trip promising to activate 22 counties, much of it up the middle of the lengthy San Joaquin valley, thru the Southern Sierras and down the central West coast.  wOw!  Is that a Rover Expedition or WHAT?!  I'm going to keep an Eye on K6AQL while running frequencies from Contra Costa (CCOS).

Many of those counties while geographically large are more sparsely populated; fewer hams and even FEWER who take the time to activate their county during CQP, so WE have to Doit for them.

QSO Parties offer the possibility of putting together county expeditions activating "more rare" counties.  I've often thought of operating as W6K from atop Mt. Abel (in Southwest Kern county) where I've run many Field Day (FD) and All Asian (A-A) GiGs.  Maybe next year.

Every year the Central Oregon DX Club (from Bend) organizes a team that go to great lengths
to activate Northeastern MODOC county; if I had access to an abandoned ranger station facility,
I'd make a trip like that for sure.

N6GEO and WQ6X made 3 trips to Southwest MODOC:

1. (2010) - An Experimental Trip
2. (2012) - The Disaster Trip with SO much potential
3. (2013) - The Redemption Trip

While S/W MODOC is literally out in the middle of NOWHERE, the air is so SUPER
CLEAN it makes me cough; at night, Carl Sagan is right: "Billions and Billions of Stars...".

The 2020 CQP event has another special-callsign sub-event happening this year.  While NoT the ONLY special of it's kind (the Sept. KQP had several words to spell out), I believe this is the first event of it's kind that provides a callsign worksheet, making it easy to check off the different 1x1 callsigns on different band-modes as each one is worked.  They should have a Double-Bonus sticker for stations who work ALL of the 21 1x1 callsigns.

What about you?  Do YOU like to run the California QSO Party (in OR out of California)? 
If so, tell us what YOU like about it and what sets it apart from other state QSO parties.

LooK for Part 2 to this Blog topic as we move closer to the October contest.