NYQP history (sort of)
You’d think we would have thought of it a lot sooner, but as the results were starting to come together, we tried to think of other info that should be in the results write-up. The history of the NYQP came to mind, so we sent out some e-mail queries to see what we could learn. Here’s what we received.
We’ll try and do more extensive research for next year, but if you have any information, leads, rumors, or sources, please let us know at info@nyqp.org.
Tom N2CU:
The last time I knew of it running was 1974. Sponsored by RPI (W2SZ).
John K2VV ex-WA2EAH:
I remember doing the writeup for the NYQP in 1974 (I graduated from RPI in '73). '74 was the year that we used KT2RPI. I also remember doing a survey of a few previous years entries and finding that Yates was the only county not represented. The best resource would probably be the QST or CQ archives.
Scott W2LC:
As I remember the NYQP was run mostly by the school clubs in NY. It was passed from school club to school club every few years. I believe that RPI W2SZ, SUNY Buffalo WA2NPQ, Clarkson K2CC, and Cornell W2CXM were all involved over the years.
The LERA ARC in Pearl River ran it in the late 60's and early 70’s, which I believe is the Lockheed Employees Radio Association ARC in Pearl River NY. I can’t find much information about that group, they don’t appear to exist anymore. A couple of the callsigns from the LERA ARC are WA2FBI, WA2FOS, WB2AEQ, W2EJR.
I’m guessing here, so these dates may be off a bit:
LERA ARC 1968-1972
RPI W2SZ 1973-1976
SUNY Buffalo WA2NPQ 1977-1984 Maybe RPI again in this period
I’m not sure where Clarkson or Cornell fit in there. K2CC and W2CXM were big time contest stations in the late 60’s, 70’s into the 80’s.
The last NYQP year was somewhere around 1982 to 1986. I graduated in 1988 and the last year was sometime before that, probably in the early to mid 80’s.
K2ZJ, N2MF and many others were involved way back when. I don’t remember the RPI callsigns, K2ZJ might. We knew a couple guys from the Troy NY area, but I can’t remember the calls. I might be able to find some QSL’s though. I have a few NYQP certificates too, I found two from the 70’s, I should have a couple from the 80’s too, I’ll look around.
As far as all time high score, that would be N2MF who had something like 1200 QSO’s one year. I remember the log it was quite impressive, all paper logged of course. That was one year that I reviewed the logs. I might still have it. But that was a couple houses ago.
If I can dig up any other information I'll pass it along. I'll go thru my QSL's I'm bound to have a couple from NYQP QSO's. Brian will probably remember the NYQP better than I do.
73. Scott W2LC
Scott Bauer, W2LC
Section Manager - Western New York
Brian N2MF:
When I was going thru some papers just last month a came across my NYQP log, or at least a summary sheet, from that year I made quite a few QSOs. I don’t think, or at least I hope I didn’t throw it out. It would be fun to review the call signs. Now where the heck was that? I report if I find it.
What I remember was being on 20 phone and just getting an almost endless run. I could never do that in Sweepstakes, HI.