 April 6, 2016 Editor: Paul Bourque, N1SFE | ||||
IN THIS ISSUE
If you're near Framingham, MA, on April 10, you may want to check out the "Discover HF Experience" or better yet, bring a couple of friends that aren't on HF yet. West Coast operators may enjoy the JIDX CW contest this weekend, should propagation hold up. If you're working on improving your CW, the SKCC Sprintathon should offer a welcoming place to be, as participants are encouraged to adjust their speeds as necessary. QSO Parties from New Mexico and Georgia can provide Qs in all modes. The next weekend, Nebraska, Ontario, Michigan, and North Dakota QSO Parties provide a smorgasbord of activity. If you're looking for just digital activity, the Tara Skirmish Digital Prefix Contest encourages activity on your choice of digital modes, including PSK, RTTY, Hell, MFSK, MT63, Throb, ASCII, SSTV, Domino EX, ALE400, JT65 and Packet. Whew! Just remember, each mode you use has to be turned in as a separate log, but some modes are seen as variations on a 'parent' mode and... like any contest, you'd better read the rules. Also, don't forget the ARRL Rookie Roundup, SSB, on Sunday, April 17. According to Wayne, N6NB, a consortium of people and clubs have come forth to make sure a UHF Contest does occur on August 6-7, 2016. For more information, see their website. BUSTED QSOS In the last issue, Zone 36 operators were erroneously attributed to a different zone. Thanks to N5ZO, N0AX, ZS6EZ, for pointing this out. Complete information for all contests follows the Conversation section April 7 April 8 April 9
April 10 April 11 April 13 April 14 April 15 April 16
April 17
April 18 April 19 April 20 Contest University 2016's Topics and Instructors have been posted on the Contest University Website, as is the course outline (PDF). Registration is open! (K3LR)
In an effort reminiscent of Bo Darville's efforts in the late 1970s, Bob, W0BH, Paul, N4PN, and John, N6MU will attempt to run 73 Georgia counties in the Georgia QSO Party this coming weekend using the callsign W0BH/m. Lorna, K0WHY, will be driving. As a multi-multi, they'll be emitting "both kinds" of signals, CW and SSB, in an equipment setup that worked well during the recent Missouri QSO Party. In 2013, Bob, Paul, and Dave, N4VDL set the current record of 61 counties. They have a long way to go, and a short time to get there, so a schedule (PDF) and map is available on the W0BH qrz.com listing. (W0BH) You may have heard that "it takes ten thousand hours to become an expert at something," or a variation of this statement. But what the expert really said about becoming an expert involves more than just putting in the hours. These four things are important: 1) Finding a Mentor, 2) Pushing the envelope of your performance 3) Learning by experience 4) Reviewing your performance to understanding how to improve. The mathematical underpinnings of communication were developed in large part by Claude Shannon. A recent biographical IEEE article explored his many other areas of contributions, including Information Theory and Cryptography. Propagation has been lacking lately, but nothing like it could be with the consequences of Earth being in the direct path of a large Coronal Mass Ejection. According to researchers, Earth could receive the brunt of a "superflare" many, many times stronger than even the 1859 Carrington Event. Scientists previously believed that the potential for large flares was predicated on very strong magnetic fields in a star. The new understanding is that it's possible to have these very large flares even with the relatively lower-level magnetic fields characteristic of our sun. (N6KI) Some MIT researchers are using off-the-shelf Wi-Fi cards to spatially locate objects with centimeter resolution. By using hardware with multiple antennas, they use the phase of incoming signals to determine a direction, sampling phase difference of a signal switching across a wide range of frequencies can yield the distance. Microsoft built a chat robot that would learned from its conversations, and let "The Internet" chat with it. It learned some bad words and phrases, started repeating them, and then was pulled.
The University of Texas Libraries has a collection of maps on their website available for your use. You can use the search box for areas of interest, for example "Antarctica Map," which yields this top hit, which helps to visualize where VK0EK is in relation to other Antarctic region stations. (N0AX) The Open Source Hardware summit is being held in Portland, Oregon, October 7, 2016. This is one of the places that people interested in topics such as using digital design tools for on-demand and small-scale production meet and discuss a wide range of topics. Last year's summit agenda and videos are available online. Potential Speakers can submit a proposal for a session that would appeal to the attendees in suggested areas of "Using, Building, and Growing Open Hardware", "Science and Research", "Technology For The People", "Open cultures: fostering harmony, openness, and beauty in the world" - how about a talk on amateur radio and homebrewing, the original maker movement?
When scoping out a potential field day, repeater, Hamnet, SOTA, or other location, you may want to "see what you can see" from that location. This website may be able to assist, by showing you the panorama view from a particular lat/long location, allowing for your height. "Kiteoon" - a combination of kite and (typically) helium balloon with fins, it's a type of aerostat that if large enough can be used to lift a wire antenna. The balloon aspect provides lift, while the fin aspect provides lift in windy conditions to counter the tendency to be driven toward ground. Car dealers use them to attract attention, 160 meter contesters use them to attract Qs.
A company has come up with a way to "print" magnets into a metal substrate, with varying polarizations. By doing so, magnetic gradients can be configured in unique ways to build machines that seem impossible. This video has a demonstration and shows how they are fabricated. (K7BTW, K4RO, N0AX) The full results of the 2015 ARRL September VHF Contest are now available on the ARRL website. The number one club for participation was the Pacific Northwest VHF Society, by a large margin. Final results for the 2015 CQ WW SSB are available. Preliminary results for the February 2016 NAQP RTTY QSO Party are available on the NCJ website. The ARRL School Club Roundup results on the WA7BNM website are now final. There was very good turnout, especially from the college-level clubs, where Texas A&M earned the top spot, followed by Embry-Riddle and Tulsa Community College. While Phone was the dominant mode across all categories, there was increased digital activity from the school clubs as well. Use DX Beacons to enhance your operating plans "TV Bob", N6TV, submits: "Ever listen to the NCDXF Beacons? The Faros program by VE3NEA can automatically listen to these beacons and record when they are heard. An excellent design ensures that even the weakest beacon signals will be detected, with QRM ignored. Here's a YouTube video of Faros in action, copying many of the 20m beacons in sequence. K2MO has posted an excellent video showing how to set up the software, which will work with virtually any transceiver." A tuned resonator for audio is a different, low-cost way to have a mechanical filter for CW. Using a speaker at the end of a tube acts like a filter - it enhances the transmission of sound at the resonant frequency of the tube. Key is tuning the tube to your preferred audio CW frequency. If you read this paper, you can calculate the approximate dimensions, build something, and then tune as necessary. Here's something I missed from last summer - Microsoft has some SDR software, and they open sourced it. Some of the building blocks may be useful for your amateur SDR project. Making printed circuit boards (PCBs) can be easy and inexpensive, as one experimenter wrote about recently. The used a combination of free software and an internet web site to design their own small two-layer board for about $6 per board. An article commenter also suggested using http://PCBShopper.com to compare manufacturers. Setting up your own cellular network may have just gotten easier. With the appropriate hardware and a Debian linux computer, the Osmocom project has built an installer that coordinates all of the pieces necessary to get OpenBSC installed and configured. This could have application (with government permission) on DXpeditions, or in specialized environments such as mines or shielded buildings. Switching a relay under load ("hot switching") isn't the best for the contacts, or the rest of the signal chain. In UHF/VHF work where preamps may be mounted at or near the antenna, it's especially important to get switching right to avoid equipment destruction. Tektran has released the C-SW hybrid IC that it claims can help control the make and break time of relays in your signal chain. The recent likely confirmation of the existence of gravity waves have spurred more research into their detection, and a slew of new antenna designs are being tried, across a wide range of frequencies. These antennas are in the microwave-to-light range, and employ such techniques as silicon lenses, and cooling to within a degree of absolute zero, to detect very weak signals. Contest Robot Last week, Microsoft was a bit chagrinned when their Artificial Intelligence tweet-driven robot learned some bad language at the hands of the Internet at Large. While this misstep became newsworthy because of the company involved, the coverage didn't usually include the reasons why this type of technology was being developed. The goal is that in the future these AI agents will be able to learn and understand queries from humans without being explicitly programmed - to factor humans INTO account, to be able to respond to the intent of conversation if even the language being used is not precise. In thinking about it, it seems to me that what we do in contesting is a bit of the opposite. Contesters aspire to constrain the domain of information exchange to the minimum required to make a contact, and we strive to have ever-more machine-like precision in our requests and responses. We strive to take the variable human part OUT. And go faster. It's hard to find a human that can copy 45.5 baud RTTY, so the computer must do that part. There used to be more humans per capita that could and were willing to interpret CW encoding of information reliably, so computers are doing more of that now, too. Aging human units can sometimes have difficulty interpreting speech information in low signal to noise situations, so while not mainstream, programming to take over that aspect is improving. Duplicate checking helps we humans remember those stations we've worked, and our computer aids can tell us what this callsign sent in the last contest; as humans, our job is to feed the information into the computer, see if we need more or different information, and then make the next contact. It's better when we send information in the same format each time, so that waiting responding stations become comfortable with the rhythm. The logging program and computer send perfect CW. For some QSOs, all the ham needs to do is click and hit enter two times. Who is operating whom? In the context of amateur radio contesting, have we already crossed that boundary? Where does the assistance end and the operator begin? 73, Brian N9ADG That's all for this time. Remember to send your FB page URL, contesting related tips, techniques, press releases, errata, selfies, pictures, stories, blog links, and Twitter handles to contest-update@arrl.org 7 Apr - 20 Apr 2016 An expanded, downloadable version of QST's Contest Corral in PDF format is available. Check the sponsor's Web site for information on operating time restrictions and other instructions. HF CONTESTS CWops Mini-CWT Test, Apr 6, 1300z to Apr 6, 1400z, Apr 6, 1900z to Apr 6, 2000z, Apr 7, 0300z to Apr 7, 0400z; CW; Bands: 160, 80, 40, 20, 15, 10m; Member: Name + Member No., non-Member: Name + (state/province/country); Logs due: April 9. VHF+ CONTESTS 144 MHz Spring Sprint, Apr 11, 1900z to Apr 11, 2300z; modes: (not specified); Bands: 2m Only; 6-character grid square; Logs due: April 25. 222 MHz Spring Sprint, Apr 19, 1900z to Apr 19, 2300z; modes: (not specified); Bands: 222 Mhz; 6-character grid square; Logs due: May 3. See also the NM, GA QSO parties, the SKCC Sprintathon, the TARA Skirmish Digital Prefix contest, and the ARRL Rookie Roundup, SSB, above. April 7, 2016 April 8, 2016 April 9, 2016 April 10, 2016
April 11, 2016 April 12, 2016 April 13, 2016 April 14, 2016 April 15, 2016 April 17, 2016 April 18, 2016 April 19, 2016 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 QST, Amateur Radio's most popular and informative journal, delivered to your mailbox each month. 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 and SM3CER's Contest Calendar. | ||||
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