Participants have often reported this is one of their favourite operating events!

The idea behind the FOCQP is to offer some stress-free opportunity for FOC Members to meet and greet both other members and non-members.

Each one of us can make this event what you want it to be – some get on for a few casual QSOs, others spend several hours on different bands and still others treat it like a "mini-marathon".

The basic concept is just to work as many stations as you can over a 24-hour period, from:

Just call "CQ BW" from 015 to 040kHz on all bands, excluding the WARC bands. The exchange is: RST, name, and FOC number (non-members send RST and name).

Many people also take the opportunity to engage in longer QSOs; this is definitely encouraged but it is entirely up to you! However, please note, we still call "CQ BW" to initiate a QSO, a tribute to Bill Windle who did so much to foster activity in our Club.

2023 FOCQP

- Saturday March 25

- Saturday Sept. 9

0000z to 2359z

* Note: Starts Friday in the U.S.

How to Report Your Results

NOTE: This procedure changed effective with the 12 Sept. 2020 QSO Party.

If you are interested in reporting your results during a FOCQP, simply log onto this website page and fill out the form: https://focqp.g4foc.org . It's as simple as that. No logs are required because we work on the honour system.

When reporting scores we separate according to: Europe, North America, North America “West Coast”, Asia, Africa and South America, and this is done automatically for you when you enter your information on the web form.

Reports are due 7 days after the event. A complete list of the stations who report, and their totals, will be included here on our public website. Handsome certificates are awarded to members and non-members on each continent reporting the highest number of QSOs.

All Bands Were In Play For The September, 2022 FOCQP

 By Art, KZ5D

(Click here to download all the scores)

(Click here to read all Soapbox comments)

Chas, K3WW, came up one QSO short of 800 to take top honors world-wide. He reported 799/586. Much like Laci, OM2VL, who had the highest number of Qs in March, Chas operates with a lot of aluminum in the air. Just take a look at his web site to see for yourself: http://k3ww.net. The West Coast leader was Riki, K7NJ with 551/410. He, too, has a number of antenna options at his well-equipped station. Get the details on QRZ.com 

The leading report from Europe was filed by Axel, DL6KVA, with 567/480. He has been active at a number of different DX locations. Check his QRZ.com listing for more. With improving conditions the reports from the other continents were quite good. Allan, VK2GR, made 220/124 contacts to lead Oceania. Allan particularly enjoys low band work. If you look him up on QRZ.com, you will see that he has been active from some other nice DX locations.

The better conditions helped Willy, UA9BA, to put in some time and amass 221 QSOs during our party, of which 153 were with members. That was enough to earn top honors from Asia.  Brian, 9J2BO, also had a very good report with 186/139 to earn top place from Africa. Brian’s QRZ.com page provides some very interesting reading about how he got his ham radio start and his career in Zambia.  Manuel, LU5OM, was able to carve out some time over the day to make 55 QSOs from South America (47 of those with members) to win the South American award. A look at Manuel’s QRZ.com page reveals his activity at quite a few DX entities.

Turning our attention to the non-member reports, it’s KR2Q at the top of the list. Doug was actually on the FOC starred list at the time and reported 431 FOC QSOs. West coast non-member leader was N7NR with 185 contacts. The other non-member continental leaders are as follows: Europe-EA6EJ with 221; Oceania-VK5GG with 17; South America-LU1AW/X with 34; Asia-JS1YGI with 19. No non-member entries were received from Africa.

As we all know from our years of experience, there’s never a perfectly level worldwide playing field. Propagation variations greatly affect the outcome of our efforts. I personally enjoy reading through all of the soapbox comments to get a feel of how things went for the other ops.