You may or may not already know that the Oceania DX SSB Contest and the California QSO Party both overlap for a considerable amount of time (14 hours). Both contest committees have been working together to facilitate the ability for an operator in the California QSO Party to also submit their log to the Oceania DX Contest with little additional effort. In effect you can work two contests at the same time! The benefit is both ways. CQP entrants have a broader field of stations that will be happy to work them from Oceania, and Oceania stations gain a similar advantage. What’s more, it opens the door for the CQP entrants to be eligible for the Oceania DX Contest USA Clubs Plaque. Yet another reason for NA stations to also participate in the Oceania DX contest at the same time!.
So how does it work?
- The California QSO Party runs from 1600 UTC 7 October 2023 to 2200 UTC 8 October 2023, overlapping with the last 14 hours of the Phone section of the OCDX contest.
- California stations can call Oceania stations to get contacts for both contests. California stations will give Oceania stations a serial number and California county and they will want a serial number (and state for Hawaii stations) in return. The same serial numbers can be used for both contests. If you want a signal report from the California station, you may need to ask for it, otherwise log them as “59”
- Some California stations may call you multiple times, either because they’re a mobile station that moves from county to county or perhaps because they worked you before the CQP contest started and want to do so again for the CQP contest. They may be duplicates for you but not for the California station. Since there are no penalties for duplicates in either contest, please help them out and just work them again. Be sure to include all contacts in your log, even duplicates.
- There’s no obligation for Oceania stations to submit a CQP log, but if you’re having fun working the California stations, please consider doing this. The CQP continues for another 16 hours after the end of OCDX SSB, so that’s plenty of time to also pick up some California CW contacts. However, to enter the CQP contest you will need to log the California counties (see the list here). If your logger doesn’t have a good place to add the county as a note, you can log the county as a call suffix (e.g. W6CQP/LANG) – both the OCDX and CQP contest log checking will accept this without any issue in call matching and scoring. You can use this form to generate your CQP log. Use “DX” as the QTH Sent and remember to copy the county to the correct location in the exchange.