Working all 100 North Carolina counties in a 10 hour period is a very overwhelming and difficult task. In the past few years a couple ops have approached working 80% of them. Of course, all 100 counties must be activated and on the air in order for a sweep to even be possible. This is where our expeditions and mobiles play a critical roll. There are quite a few NC counties with almost no active hams residing in them.

We are ramping up our effort to get all 100 counties on the air and changing the county award. No more “Worked most counties” awards. We’re going for broke. The award is for a 100 county Sweep. To my knowledge, this has never been done since NCQP started in the early 70’s. The first person to achieve a full NC county sweep will receive a very fancy (read: expensive!) plaque with annotation it being THE FIRST EVER NC county sweep. Second, a $100 cash prize, and third, I will travel to anywhere in the continental USA to personally present your award before your peers at your local club meeting or time of your choosing.

This is a huge deal for us on the committee and we are all looking forward to the day this FIRST award is presented. To help this along, a few small, but important, rule changes are being made. Every In-State op can count the county they make their QSOs from as part of the sweep (only 99 more!) Expeditions, mobiles; same thing applies. Each county operated from checks off the sweep total regardless if you made a QSO to someone else in the county from which you were physically in operating.

Note these “county credits” only apply to adjudicating the status of your sweep. Score multiplier rules are unchanged. Mults are only posted and calculated in your points for your operating county if you actually work someone else who is there also.

Marty / W4MY

NCQP Chairman

PS: In the rare situation we have more than one “sweep” next year, #1 will be given to the op who completes it first during the event. Lets hope we have that problem!