CQP Process

Running the California QSO Party (CQP) takes more effort than many people realize, and here we will lay out the major components of the process.

1. June 1: The CQP rules for the upcoming contest are fixed.
2. June-October: Register county activation and promote contest participation.
3. August 5: Field the log retrieval system and perform last minute testing.
4. First weekend in October: The CQP contest. The log retrieval system is active from the start of the contest on. The goal of log retrieval is to get as many logs as possible, to get accurate information about each entrant's category (single-op, multi-single, multi-multi, county expedition, etc) and the overlays (YL, youth, etc), and to provide feedback to hams about issues they may want to fix to improve their scores.
5. 3 days before end of log submission deadline: Scan submitted logs, and identify callsigns who haven't submitted a log yet who appear at least 10 times in logs. When possible, send emails to those hams reminding them to submit their CQP logs.
6. Log submission deadline (two weeks after contest): Turn off log retrieval; however, continue taking CQP T-shirt orders.
7. Log normalization: even with feedback during the log retrieval process, there are going to be messy logs. Log normalization is about taking the set of messy logs and generating a set of logs that can be parsed by the cross-log checking software (Green). The cross-log checking software requires good logs as input. This process often takes several weeks. Sometimes, we have to contact people to try to figure out the logs.
8. Cross-log checking: Using the normalized logs, perform cross-log checking. For each QSO entry in a log, decide if it's confirmed, partially confirmed (for half credit), a NIL, a busted call, etc.
9. Scoring: Once logs have been scored, data from the logs is loaded into a SQL database, and PDF are generated by a program.
10. Results review: The results are reviewed to make sure no mistakes have been made. Logs that are near ties may be checked. Contestants categories are double checked. Changes may be made and reports rerun.
11. Posting of results: The results from the PDF are duplicated in HTML, and PDFs and HTML are posted.
12. Wine and Plaques: Interacting with the awards chair, we come up with wine labels and plaques for the CQP. We review the proofs from Arnolds Awards.
13. Plaque donations: Solicit donations to cover plaque costs starting with list from last year. The NCCC Sec/Treas handles the money.
14. NCCC March Meeting: CQP plaques handed out and results announced.