Indiana QSO Party
CQ INQP CQ INQP
Sponsored by HDXCC the Hoosier DX and Contest Club

Hoosier DX and Contest Club... Revitalizing a State QSO Party
By Mel - KJ9C and Tim - N9LF

Getting started

For years the Land O Lakes Radio Club had sponsored the annual Indiana QSO Party, mostly through the hard work of Sharon WD9DSP (SK 2021). In lieu of letting the QSO party die, HDXCC offered to take it over. After all, there’s nothing to running a state QSO party, right? Little did we know how much work had been done in the past and how much work it would take. Yet with a larger club and more people, we managed to increase entries threefold for the 2002 Indiana QSO Party.

Our first task was to set up dates and rudimentary rules. Tim N9LF volunteered to chair the event, and with Steve W9TN created rules based on some of the bigger state parties. We opted to retain the "First Saturday in May" scheduling that had been the case for many years. It is fortunate that this weekend coincides with the MARAC County Hunters CW contest and the newly created New England QSO Party. (Many of us participated in all three events using just one log.

Mel-KJ9C and Pat-N9RV accepted the task of generating publicicty. They figured that contesters would recognize Pat’s call from the 2002 World Radiosport Team Championship, giving us some credibility. Since Pat was prepping for his WRTC appearance, he kept behind the scenes. Little did we know that there were more existing web links to INQP than just WA7BNM’s contest page. It took 50 e-mails and yet more repeated requests to finally get all the major web pages and most of the minor web links changed to the HDXCC web site.

There was no logging software for INQP. W9TN created .DOM files to be used with TR; SMC member Steve N9OH created a module for Writelog, and Dave K8CC created an INQP version for NA. Many logs were accepted on paper, thanks to Mike N9NS for collecting and sorting them. But Mike missed the contest, being on yet another DXpedition (this time to Las Vegas!).

W9TN created a web page for the party, with rules and a list of counties to be activated and tied it to the club’s web page (www.hdxcc.org/inqp). One of our bigger discussions was deciding what county abbreviations to use in the party exchange.

We did not try to coordinate mobile activity (see the Illinois QSO Party for a good coordination effort), so we missed having a few counties on the air.

N9LF spent countless hours checking logs, printing and mailing certificates and Joe K8JP/V31JP donated plaques for the overall winners.

Keeping it going

After the club's initial efforts at reinvigorating the INQP, we found that keeping things going required just as much effort. Here are just a few examples:

  • The log checking process has evolved from a completely manual process to one that is mostly automated via a suite of custom database programs. Beginning in 2026, the entire log checking software was completely rewritten from the ground up. The goal was to have a reliable and maintainable system that will last for years.
  • A number of volunteers including KJ9C, WN9O, WB9CIF, AE9LL, K9RU, KJ9B and K9WX (and probably others) help coordinate planned operations to ensure that we activate all 92 Indiana counties, and generate publicity and promote the INQP.

We annually consider adjustments to the rules. Some rule changes resulted from suggestions or requests from the various participants while others were merely utilitarian (e.g., to maintain fair competition) or to "keep up" with what is customary with other contests and QSO parties.

Notable occurances and rule changes:

  • 2002 First running of the New England QSO Party (NEQP)
  • 2004Add Portable category; shorten operating period to 12 hours
  • 2006Stations limited to county lines (eliminate 3 and 4 county corners)
  • 2006First running of the Seventh Area QSO Party (7QP)
  • 2007Club competition established for Indiana based local clubs.
  • 2010Add Rover category
  • 2011Add Multi-Multi category
  • 2015Delaware QSO Party moves to First Saturday in May
  • 2017 Changed the Indiana county abbreviations to a more standardized format of the two letter state plus three letter county, INMRN for example. This aligns us with NEQP and 7QP, (hopefully) leading to less confusion to operators who work multiple QSO parties.
  • 2020 The global COVID-19 pandemic results in state-wide quarantine orders. As a result, the rules were temporarily modified to accomodate the restrictions on travel and groups. The In-state Mobile, Rover and Portable categories were suspended and the Multi-Op categories limited to in-home stations. To compensate, Distributed Multi-Single and Distributed Multi-Multi were created to allow clubs and groups to particpate as teams while maintaining geographical separation.
  • 2026The number of points per Phone QSOs was changed from one to two. This is a rising trend with other state QSO parties.
  • 20262026 - We now properly designate portable stations in two classes: Single-County and County-Line (two counties only, no corners).