 September 30, 2020 Editor: Paul Bourque, N1SFE | ||
IN THIS ISSUE
Bruce Horn, CQ Contest Hall of Famer and the mover and shaker behind ContestCalendar.com, suggests the FISTS Slow Speed Sprint for those interested in a "truly low-speed CW contest." The next one is being held 1700Z-2100Z, Oct 3. Participants are asked to not exceed 13 WPM. October 5 is the next K1USN Slow Speed Test (SST). This is a weekly CW contest at a "leisurely" pace, perfect for new CW operators or contesters. In the US, the contest time is 8-9 PM EDT Sunday evening. If you enjoy contests where grid squares are the exchange, and want to try a digital mode that can be faster than FTx, give the Makrothen RTTY Contest a try on October 10 or 11. There are three 8-hour contest periods, you can enter them all if you like. If you're already set up for an FTx mode, you can install MMTTY or another AFSK RTTY program and get on the air. Over the next two weeks the California, Nevada, Arizona, Pennsylvania, and South Dakota state QSO parties will be held. The Nevada QSO Party rules even specify how one might use FT4/FT8 to make valid QSOs for their event. Complete information for all contests follows the Conversation section 1 Oct - 14 Oct 2020 October 1 October 2 October 3
October 4 October 5 October 6 October 7 October 8 October 9 October 10
October 11 October 12 October 13 October 14
The California QSO Party has some changes for 2020. See the complete rules for more information, but importantly, all multi-operator stations (multi-single and multi-multi) must register before the contest. Logs from multi stations that have NOT preregistered will be considered check logs. This year will be the 55th running of the CQP, and takes place 1600 UTC October 3, 2020 to 2200 UTC October 4, 2020. Awards for category winners include 40 bottles of wine, 55 plaques, certificates, and T-shirts. The Oceania DX CW and SSB Contests are coming up in the next 2 weeks. Note that the contest start and end times are TWO HOURS EARLIER than previous years:
The new Portable Operations Challenge is October 3 and 4, 2020. The operator may choose any 8-hour contiguous period during the 48 hours of the event to operate. Contest scores are based on a kilometers-per-watt metric, and operation is to take place on 80, 40, 20, 15, and 10 meters. While non-portable stations can compete, the contest rules are biased towards portable operating. See the rules for the score calculation, exchange, restrictions, and the special rule requiring a "Data security and handling conditions text statement" to be submitted with each log entry. NCJ is a sponsor, however this is not an official ARRL or NCJ contest. Tim, K9WX, writes: "SMC Holds First-Ever Virtual SMC Fest! SMC Fest has always been the premier in-person event for the Society of Midwest Contesters (SMC) with typically about 100 attending on site. The COVID-19 pandemic made that approach a non-starter for 2020. So, like many other ham radio clubs, SMC held the 2020 SMC Fest in a virtual format. And while everyone missed the opportunity for face to face interaction with old friends, everyone also agreed that the August 22, 2020 SMC Fest was a hit despite the change in format. "We've always had a great lineup of presenters and that tradition continued for 2020" noted SMC president Anthony Willard, AB9YC. "But this year, the presenters had to adapt their information to the online format and we had to manage the logistics of doing Q&A online, along with having a slate of moderators who kept everything running smoothly. One upside: the new format made it possible to do things we could not have done in person. Cedrick Johnson, WT2P, gave a live demonstration on measuring stubs and filters using a VNA. He could do that in our webinar format while sitting at home in his shack but, logistically, there is just no way he could have easily done that from a hotel conference room." You can see a list of presentations on the SMC Fest web page and videos of each presentation can also be viewed on the SMC YouTube channel. For 2020, the virtual SMC Fest had 178 registrations and 131 unique attendees along with 11 presenters and moderators. Additionally, in previous years, registration was limited to members only, but the virtual nature of the 2020 event allowed non-members to be accommodated. And perhaps the icing on the cake: SMC gained quite a few new members, making SMC Fest its most effective recruiting effort in quite some time. Joe, K7JOE, found the website QSOMap.org to be a "very helpful tool for antenna directional performance mapping." Joe notes that "Using the RBN, it is a helpful visual tool to see where your signal is propagating, the skip zone that you are hitting (or missing) and band vs band comparisons." Joe uses it for A/B antenna testing, and he finds it insightful to upload ADIF files of his contacts. N1MM Logger+ users that also use WSJT-X for FTx contesting: According to Al, AB2ZY, From this week's release onward, N1MM Logger+ will require WSJT-X version 2.2 or later. Additionally, when WSJT-X is started from within N1MM Logger+, it will be configured to use the language settings configured in N1MM Logger+. WSJT-X is getting a new mode in the just-published release candidate version 2.3.0: FST-4. This mode is intended as a replacement for JT9 and WSPR. Based on a 4-GFSK modulation scheme, FST4 has some "knobs" that can be turned: selectable transmission length and different sub-mode tone spacings. Designations of the particular mode and settings for communicating with potential QSO partners will be in the form of FST4{W}-{Transmission Length}{Submode} - Examples: FST4W-120A, -300A, -900A, -1800A for WSPR-like modes, or FST4-15A, FST4-30B, FST4-30C, FST4-30D for 15 second A, 30 second B, C, and D modes. WSJT-X version 2.3.0rc1 is available for download now from the WSJT-X webpage. Mac users of WSJT-X version 2.3.0rc1: You will receive an error message at startup unless you change your system configuration for shared memory. See this article for more information and the changes that are necessary. Gimmick Capacitor A capacitor made by twisting two strands of insulated wire together. Capacitance is on the order of 2-3pF per inch for normal hookup wire. Variations include the use of Formvar-insulated wire or coaxial cable for higher voltage applications. Here's a Hackaday article with more information, and links to calculators for different wire types. Dink, N7WA, suggested this YouTube video by contester Randy, K5ZD: "Tips for Being A Better Single Op Contester." According to Randy's description: "This was the last presentation of the (virtual Ham Expo arranged by 4Z1UG) on Sunday afternoon and yet there were over 125 people who joined the Q&A afterwards. My sense from the Q&A (unfortunately not part of the YouTube recording) is that there is a wide-ranging thirst for information about operating among hams today. Hope you find the presentation interesting and educational. Please share it with your club and hams interested in contesting." Dennis, N6KI, writes: "Any new battery technology will ultimately affect portable contesting use. Here's a video speculating on what's coming from Tesla's new cell design."
Ward, N0AX, writes: The North American Sprint CW preliminary scores have been posted on ncjweb.com. This latest running represents a marked increase in participation versus a year ago. Results will be published in an upcoming issue NCJ. Also, please note this announcement in the preliminary results: The 2021 February CW Sprint and March RTTY Sprint will start ONE HOUR EARLIER at 2300 UTC. September times are UNCHANGED. This will start the contest before 20 meters is closed on the East Coast. The contest duration will still be 4 hours --ending at 0259 UTC instead of the usual 0359 UTC. This is a temporary change to see if band activity is more balanced with an earlier start time and evaluate whether to keep that starting time after the contests. Reiterating...next September's Sprint start times will still be 0000 UTC. The change will give the eastern half of the US more time on 20 meters during the late winter with low solar flux and should increase everyone's QSO totals with more time there. A big thank-you and welcome to new Sprinters from CWOps and NAQP CW participants. We are very glad to see some new calls and know you will want to put the CW Sprint on your calendars for February! Your Exchange Should Be Correct and Not Be Unique It's time for an operating tip repeat: If you're in a contest and you want to work others in that contest, your exchange should be in the same format as the other people you are working. For example, if the contest exchange is RST, CQ zone, and state, it's most common to send "599 03 WA" as an exchange. Sure, you could send "599 03 Washington" or "5NN 03 Washington" (in 5-bit Baudot, 5NN takes slightly longer to send than 599) but most logging programs are expecting a two-character abbreviation for state. If you're getting asked for frequent repeats by different stations, it may be a sign that your exchange has something unconventional in it. Steve, K6OIK, writes: "Here is a great IEEE video on antennas by Yaha Rahmat-Samii, Professor of Electrical Engineering at UCLA. It's equal parts history and tutorial. This was presented at IEEE International Microwave Symposium, June 2013. I was a speaker and organized the focus session on Non-Foster Circuits for this symposium and so was able to attend this lecture live. I just discovered the video recording is public." The goal of the "Radio Resilience Competition" is to "find the most interference-resistant, highest-performance waveforms possible." The event was announced during GNU Radio Con 2020, and encourages entrants to use GNU Radio as the testbed. No actual hardware is needed, nor is it necessary to transmit anything over the air - the competition takes place using an RF simulator. It's unclear from the website how the vagaries of propagation will factor into the competition if at all. There was a historically interesting discussion of push-pull vs. single-ended linear amplifiers on the Amplifiers email reflector last month. The discussion started with Tom, W7WHY, asking why push-pull amplifier designs prominently featured in QST during the late 1940s and early 1950s gave way to the later non-push-pull designs. Victor, 4X6GP, opined that it "happened after WWII, when surplus coax became available. Shielded, single-ended circuits with pi-networks running into coax-fed antennas became the hot setup" and furthermore that bandswitching balanced output networks was problematic. Karl-Arne, SM0ARM, noted that "at higher frequencies... it becomes easier to get the proper L/C ratio as the circuit tuning and stray capacitances essentially are in series." Remote Hands Make Light Work I subscribe to a variety of amateur-radio-related email lists devoted to things like particular transceiver models, logging programs, contest clubs, keyers, RTTY decoders, FTx software... and so on. Traffic on many of the lists has increased over the last few months as people have had time to devote to this hobby. None of the lists are solely devoted to troubleshooting problems at the computer-radio gear boundaries, but on occasion my inbox will fill up overnight as one person posts a problem, and one or more people enter a multi-round dialog to solve the problem. Watching a problem be presented in email, seeing additional information about it being teased out by the community, coming to an eventual resolution - it has the feel of a TV crime or medical drama where we're all trying to solve the case along with the actors. Often times the pathway to a solution reveals more information on the inner workings of the components involved, which helps educate the mailing list readership. Sometimes the methods that used to troubleshoot can be applied to other situations, again, helping the entire community. But on occasion one person's very particular problem might be more easily solved if a knowledgeable helper could just sit down next to the person and go over the problem, collect the necessary information, and provide suggestions on how to proceed. Rather than troubleshooting these kinds of problems using the back and forth of email messages, it might be better handled through... additional tools. One appropriate group of tools that we've all become more familiar with lately includes Zoom, Join.me, Microsoft Teams, Skype, and a number of others - meeting and video conferencing tools. Most, if not all of these have the "feature" that enables screen sharing by the meeting participants. The person that is experiencing the problem can share their screen with others in real-time, and the troubleshooting can happen in real-time. Using these lightweight, mostly non-invasive, and sometimes free conferencing tools for this purpose can shorten the time required to gather relevant information and apply appropriate remedies. Other related tools that might be useful include TeamViewer or NoMachine for when closer control of the target system is necessary. Beyond troubleshooting, conference tools can be used for contest station building activities. For example, the Pacific Northwest VHF Society has a group that meets on weekends via video conferencing to build and troubleshoot microwave gear. Another: as Tim, K9WX, pointed out in this issue, the virtual SMC Fest's use of these tools allowed Cedrick, WT2P, to interactively demonstrate the measurement of filters and stubs to the Fest's audience. One other feature to consider: Many of these tools also have the ability to record the session for later sharing. Perhaps that recording will be able to help someone else troubleshoot a similar problem in the future. Just don't forget to post a link to that video with a description to the email reflector. 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 1 Oct - 14 Oct 2020 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, Oct 1, 0300z to Oct 1, 0400z; CW; Bands: 160, 80, 40, 20, 15, 10m; Member: Name + Member No., non-Member: Name + (state/province/country); Logs due: October 3. YLRL DX/NA YL Anniversary Contest, Oct 3, 1400z to Oct 4, 0200z; CW/Digital, SSB, Separate logs for each mode; Bands: All, except WARC; Serial No. + RS(T) + (ARRL Section/province/country); Logs due: November 3. VHF+ CONTESTS
ARRL EME Contest, Oct 10, 0000z to Oct 11, 2359z; CW, Phone, Digital; Bands: 50 MHz and up; Signal report; Logs due: December 29. UBA ON Contest, 6m, Oct 11, 0800z to Oct 11, 1000z; CW, Phone; Bands: 6m Only; ON: RS(T) + Serial No. + ON Section, non-ON: RS(T) + Serial No.; Logs due: October 25. VHF-UHF FT8 Activity Contest, Oct 14, 1700z to Oct 14, 2000z; FT8; Bands: (see rules); 4-character grid square; Logs due: October 19. Also, see Worldwide Sideband Activity Contest, South Dakota QSO Party, Arizona QSO Party, SKCC Weekend Sprintathon, Nevada QSO Party, SKCC Sprint Europe, Pennsylvania QSO Party, above. 1 Oct - 14 Oct 2020 October 1, 2020 October 2, 2020 October 3, 2020 October 4, 2020
October 5, 2020 October 6, 2020 October 7, 2020 October 8, 2020 October 9, 2020 October 10, 2020 October 11, 2020 October 12, 2020
October 13, 2020 October 14, 2020 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. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ARRL Contest Update wishes to acknowledge information from WA7BNM's Contest Calendar and SM3CER's Contest Calendar. | ||
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