 August 4, 2021 Editor: Paul Bourque, N1SFE | |
IN THIS ISSUE
The Worked All Europe DX Contest, CW, is August 14-15. This one is a lot of fun, especially if you try exchanging QTC traffic with other stations. It will test your copying skills, and add points to your score should you try. Make sure you read the contest web page and the rules. For CW and SSB WAE contests, only contacts with EU stations will count. Also, there are portions of 80, 40, and 20 meters that are off limits for CW contest operation for IARU Region 1: "3570-3800; 7040-7200; 14070-14350 kHz." If that's not your cup of tea (or stein of beer?) then try the Maryland-DC QSO Party, or the Kentucky State Parks on the Air events. The weekend of August 21-22, get your RTTY on with three eight-hour sessions of the SARTG WW RTTY Contest. You'll get exposure to a complete propagation day, but in eight-hour chunks spread over forty hours. In the eight-hour interval between sessions, you might be able to get some sleep. As always, see the rules. If you don't get enough RTTY with the SARTG, then do some more in the ARRL Rookie Roundup, RTTY, which kicks off at 1800z on Sunday (2pm East Coast time) and goes for six hours. The August 21-22 weekend also features the CW-only Keyman's Club of Japan Contest, popular with US stations on the west coast, the North American QSO Party, SSB, popular everywhere in NA, which has a 100 watt limit for all and a late-summer-weekend-friendly 12-hour format. BUSTED QSOS In the "New HF Operators" section in the last issue, I wrote: "The next two weekends don't feature any major contests..." Peg, KB9LIE, wrote: "The RSGB IOTA contest this weekend IS a major contest to worldwide hams. For newer contesters, it is a great one to pick up experience. Been waiting all year for this one." Last weekend, during the IOTA contest, I was listening to the CW portion of 20 meters. It was rocking! One K3 station had amassed over 1000 Q's and was busy during the interval I was listening. Peg, you are right! This one deserved a recommendation as one that had a lot of activity. 5 Aug - 18 Aug 2021 Complete information for all contests follows the Conversation section August 5 August 6 August 7
August 9 August 10 August 11
August 12 August 13 August 14
August 15 August 16 August 17 August 18 To work them, you have to be able to hear them. Bob's, K0NR, latest blog entry talks about being able to discern a 1 dB difference in an audio signal, and the audiocheck.net website that provides the appropriate audio signals. Beyond audio level differences, the site also can generate tones to challenge your hearing's frequency range. Alan, AD6E/KH6TU, notes that the Hawaii QSO Party website has corrected information on the event's website. The event is from 0400z on August 28 through 0359z on August 30. For 2021, the rules allow the exchange of grid squares in lieu of QTH name, if the mode (cough-FT4/FT8-cough) being used does not allow QTH names. Hawaii's grids start with BK, BL, or AL (rare). "The Portage County Amateur Radio Service in Ohio is again sponsoring the Ohio State Parks On The Air contest for 2021 (our 14th year). The event is always on the Saturday following the Labor Day, so this year's event falls on Saturday, September 11." This SSB-only event is on 80,40,20, 15, and 10 meters. Working all seventy-five Ohio parks qualifies you to apply for the "Worked All Ohio State Parks" award. (Tom, KB8UUZ) The Pacific Northwest now has its own channel on the popular VHF-Chat Slack. This provides a geographically-focused real-time chat channel. Slack is a popular messaging platform with well-supported clients on mobile devices, web browsers, and mainstream operating systems. "Slack is greatly invaluable for many things and a 'one-stop shop' for the VHF happenings of the day." (James, K7KQA, via PNWVHFS email reflector) For professional tower personnel, here's a contest: The Tower Rescue Rodeo Challenge. I'm not sure "throwdown" is the right word for an event involving heights, but December 3-4, 2021 in Phoenix, eight two-person teams will compete for the top position. The challenges include "integrated rescue, knots, mechanical advantages and rigging skills." It's not just all fun and games - the event qualifies for the "annual rescue practice requirements of OSHA CFR 1910 and OSHA CFR 1926, ANSI 10.48, and ANSI z359." The website features a highlight reel from 2020 - check out the cool tower trophies! (Hector, XE2K, via Twitter). The CQ WW contests have some category additions for this year. According to John, K1AR, CQ WW Contest Director, there's a new YOUTH overlay for those 25 and under. That means that logs that are submitted with CATEGORY-OVERLAY: YOUTH will be highlighted in the results as is done now for existing Classic and Rookies overlay. The youth overlay category will also have plaques for the winners. There is also a new EXPLORER category, which encourages innovation by establishing the contest boundaries but otherwise leaving room to "encourage innovation in operating strategies, station design, and technology adaptation." EXPLORER seems similar in spirit to the 2011-2012 CQ WW Xtreme category. With CQ WW's announcement that it will recognize Youth entrants, don't forget the NCJ's North American QSO Parties will also recognize Youth entries in the Single-Operator category. Beginning with this month's NAQP CW (August 7-8) and NAQP SSB (August 21-22) a Youth check box will be added on https://3830scores.com and on the NAQP log upload app at https://ncjweb.com/naqplogsubmit. Operators age 25 and under may "self-certify" when checking the box. Youth scores will be included with the regular Single-Op scores and in their own table in the results. This is a great way to encourage youth participation in contesting and we hope other contests will do so, as well. From The ARRL Letter of July 29, 2021: A cofounder of the ARRL RTTY Roundup, Hal Blegen, K7IRA, died on July 27. He was 77. Blegen created the RRU with Jay Townsend, WS7I. He was described as "a force to be reckoned with in RTTY contests back in the day." The first few paragraphs of this Field Day report from the Waltham Amateur Radio Association start out with a whimsical description of Field Day: "Field Day is the 'it's-not-a-contest-but-maybe-it-really-is' highlight of the Radio Amateur year. It's traditionally held on the last bad-weather weekend in June..." Need to find a 6-character sub-grid for the upcoming ARRL 222 MHz and Up Distance Contest? Try http://karhukoti.com's grid square locator map. You can find a square using a map, or zoom to a map using a square. Two Thousand PEP Watts, and only 14 pounds? DXpeditions will want to take a look at the Burst 2000A amplifier from Russia. It touts liquid cooling for its dual LDMOS devices, 160m-6m coverage, color LCD screen, with microprocessor control of all functions. (via QRZnow.com) "SPC" or "S/P/C" When written in contest descriptions as part of the exchange description, "SPC" means "State/Province/Country." Many QSO parties or events divide contacts into "in-entity" or "out-of-entity" groups, with the in-entity stations providing a county, state, or other in-entity identifier. While specific contests rules vary, stations outside of the entity provide their State, Province, or Country (or "DX") as appropriate. Examples: for the upcoming North American QSO Party, everyone provides their "state/DC/province/country," for the Maryland-DC QSO Party on August 14, MDC stations send their county, non-MDC stations send SPC. A VE3 station would send "Ontario." A W6 in San Francisco would send "CA." DX stations would likely just send their prefix, for example a German station would send "DL." RadioBerry is an HF SDR Transceiver board by PA3GSB built in the form factor of a Raspberry Pi-Hat. With DDC and DUC, it's operating range is 0-30 MHz. The RTL-SDR.com website features a video showing setup, configuration, and reception of HF signals a RadioBerry and Raspberry Pi 4. Mark, K6UFO, NAQP RTTY Contest Manager, has been emailing everyone he knows with the news: "Preliminary results for the July 2021 North American QSO Party on RTTY are now available at the National Contest Journal website. Congratulations to all participants! Please report any problems to me. There is still time to send me your photo or story for the final results. Thanks!" David, ND4Y, KyQP Chairman, writes: "The 2021 Kentucky QSO Party results are out and can be found at https://kyqsoparty.org/results. Thanks for all the ops who participated by getting on the air and making contacts to make the 2021 KyQP a great success. Special thanks to all of the Kentucky Contest Group volunteers who donated many hours in putting this year's QSO party together. See you next year!" In 2022, the Kentucky QSO Party will be held June 4-5. WRTC-2022's Qualification Standings have been updated. The update involved assigning qualifying points to operators in multi-operator teams, when the number of operators in a team is greater than two. While email was sent to all affected operators, the contest sponsors ask that that the qualification standings be reviewed for accuracy. No change requests will be accepted after August 31, 2021. (Because of the global pandemic, the WRTC-2022 event has been postponed to July, 2023.) The results article for the 2020 CQ 160 contest has been posted. Andy's, N2NT, in-depth description of the battle between W2GD and K3LR, and how the world winning CW multi-op team, UA2FW, built the winning station in three months, is riveting. For UA2FW, it took four operating positions, multiple receiving antennas, and a new directional transmitting antenna to achieve over two million points. Knowing When To Fold 'Em If you've had a good run going, but your rate is dropping, when do you leave the frequency? And where do you go? Before you change something, make sure your rate really is crummy. Try to use read data: compare this hour of the contest to the same hour the last time you did this contest. Or, listen to comparable stations in your region on your other VFO to see if their rate is about the same as yours. Ask stations you're working if the frequency you're using is clear at their end. Make sure you're not switching just because your great rate turned into just a good rate. A good rate is just that - good. Before you change something, try to determine if what you're going to do next really will provide a better rate. "FCC to Re-Establish Technological Advisory Council, Solicits Membership Nominations" The video is called "Ink Filled Brass Machine Plates" but along the way you'll see how a good etchant for brass and copper (as found on PC boards) can be made from hydrogen peroxide and hydrochloric (muriatic) acid, how to powder-coat small parts, and how to make nice brass plates for your homebrew gear. You just received an email with some contest video taken with a cell phone, and your Microsoft Windows 10 mail program or web browser is prompting you to buy a CODEC $0.99 so you can view it? It's because some of the really new cell phones encode video with the H.265 format, which isn't supported by default in Windows 10. You can avoid the one-time $0.99 download by installing the free open source application VLC media player, which includes support for the H.265 format. Once you install the free VLC app, the next time you get a video in that format, playing it will work just fine! WSJT-X 2.5.0-rc4 is now available from the WSJT-X website. The program authors are particularly interested in feedback from those who use Q65 sub-modes, as well as those using MAP65, "a wideband polarization-matching tool intended primarily for EME." This tweet of wiring from BGA pins on a printed circuit board to a socket to correct for... something...is amazing and appalling, both at once. Nice antenna array you've got there. This is not best practice. To Improve It, You Must First Measure It To make something better, it's helpful to first establish a baseline of performance metrics so that as changes are made, an evaluation can be done as to whether the changes helped or not. For example, when trying to improve antennas, using the Reverse Beacon Network to compare between two antennas can be helpful, as long as the measurements are made in a way that helps minimize the potential effects of varying propagation. Measurements can also be used to guard against performance degradation. Many successful contest stations keep a station notebook where characteristics of various station components are tracked, and watched for problems. It's better to replace a failing piece of coax or get appropriate parts for a piece of gear that is going out of spec outside of a contest interval. The conventional wisdom is that in order for the radio contesting hobby to continue, it is necessary to engage younger amateur radio operators. Effort and resources go into attracting youth to enter radio contests, but how do we know it is working? There's anecdotal information that certain activities lead to radio contest participation, but for any of the large, popular contests, I am not aware that the age of each contester is noted nor reported.* Now that the North American QSO Parties and CQ World Wide contests are going to incentivize under-25 operators to self-report by providing a separate overlay category with separated rankings and plaque awards, we have another opportunity to better understand how many people are in these categories and to track that information over time. Once these numbers can be measured, we'll be better able to improve them. Since on-line log submittal forms ask for an email address, there is another opportunity to better understand new contesters of all ages. To each YOUTH, ROOKIE or first-time-in-this-contest-call-sign submitter, contest sponsors could email a small survey to find out the activities new participants engaged in (For example: radio clubs, online forums, mentoring, previous participation in a multi-op, ham radio camp, etc.) that led them to join in the contest. Then, sponsors could use this information to make more informed decisions on future potential-new-contester activities. *At one time, the FCC did make birth date information available in the dataset of amateur radio licensees, but that information is no longer available due to privacy concerns. I do note that some contest sponsors may have the ability to correlate a call sign to a self-reported birthday from other databases. That's all for this time. Remember to send contesting related stories, book reviews, tips, techniques, press releases, errata, schematics, club information, pictures, stories, blog links, and predictions to contest-update@arrl.org 73, Brian N9ADG 5 Aug - 18 Aug 2021 An expanded, downloadable version of QST's Contest Corral is available as a PDF. Check the sponsors' website for information on operating time restrictions and other instructions. HF CONTESTS CWops Mini-CWT Test, Aug 5, 0300z to Aug 5, 0400z; CW; Bands: 160, 80, 40, 20, 15, 10m; Member: Name + Member No./"CWA", non-Member: Name + (state/province/country); Logs due: August 7. FISTS Saturday Sprint, Aug 7, 1600z to Aug 7, 1800z; CW; Bands: 80, 40, 20, 15, 10m; FISTS: RST + (state/province/country) + first name + FISTS No., non-FISTS: RST + (state/province/country) + first name + "0"; Logs due: August 21. VHF+ CONTESTS
ARRL 222 MHz and Up Distance Contest, Aug 7, 1800z to Aug 8, 1800z; Any; Bands: 222 MHz and up; 6-character grid square; Logs due: August 22. 50 MHz Fall Sprint, Aug 14, 2300z to Aug 15, 0300z; not specified; Bands: 6m Only; 4-character grid square; Logs due: August 28. Also, see SKCC Sprint Europe, SKCC Weekend Sprintathon, Worldwide Sideband Activity Contest, Maryland-DC QSO Party, above. 5 Aug - 18 Aug 2021 August 5, 2021 August 6, 2021 August 7, 2021 August 8, 2021 August 9, 2021 August 10, 2021 August 11, 2021 August 12, 2021 August 13, 2021 August 14, 2021 August 15, 2021
August 16, 2021
August 17, 2021 August 18, 2021 ARRL Information Click here to advertise in this newsletter, space subject to availability. Your One-Stop Resource for Amateur Radio News and Information ARRL membership includes a choice of one print magazine: QST, the monthly membership journal, or On the Air, ARRL's new bimonthly publication for beginner and intermediate hams. All ARRL members can access all four ARRL magazines -- QST, On the Air, NCJ, and QEX - digitally. Subscribe to NCJ - the National Contest Journal. Published bimonthly, features articles by top contesters, letters, hints, statistics, scores, NA Sprint and QSO Parties. Subscribe to QEX - A Forum for Communications Experimenters. Published bimonthly, features technical articles, construction projects, columns and other items of interest to radio amateurs and communications professionals. Free of charge to ARRL members: Subscribe to The ARRL Letter (weekly digest of news and information), the ARES E-Letter (monthly public service and emergency communications news), Division and Section news -- and much more! ARRL offers a wide array of products to enhance your enjoyment of Amateur Radio. Visit the site often for new publications, specials and sales. Donate to the fund of your choice -- support programs not funded by member dues! Reprint permission can be obtained by sending email to permission@arrl.org with a description of the material and the reprint publication. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ARRL Contest Update wishes to acknowledge information from WA7BNM's Contest Calendar. | |
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