My first FOC QSO party was in March 2013 and it was a very enjoyable day. This event was different as in early September I was invited to join FOC and so this was my first QSO Party as a member.
Conditions on the high bands started off poor and in the morning I worked a few folks around EU on 40m. After regular breaks for chores throughout the day I ended up on the bands for just under 9 hours. Logging was done with N1MM, which is not my regular contest logger, but it seemed to work after I’d managed to configure the macros etc. Most keying was done by hand anyway.
In all I had 157 QSOs across 80-15m. The odd times I checked 10m there was no activity but 15m did open to the US west coast later on.
The only disappointing part was that I seemed to attract some deliberate QRM on 40m in the evening around 7023kHz, certainly had a tuner-upper who hung around for a while and then someone sending nonsense on the frequency for a minute or two. Thankfully neither were too persistent, though I did QSY shortly afterwards.
The highlight for me was being called by 9J2BO on 15m for a quick QSO, it’s always nice to be called by the more unusual DX stations. All being well I shall be active in March for the next FOC QSO Party.