 December 21, 2022 Editor: Paul Bourque, N1SFE | ||
In this Issue:
Upcoming Contests - Things to Do It's an operating event, not a contest. The ARRL Volunteers On the Air Operating Event starts January 1, 2023, and is a year-long on-air celebration that "recognizes the organization's abundant volunteer support and contributions." Get on the air and make contacts, upload your logs to LoTW, and check your score online. LoTW will automatically tally your point totals. Check out the details at http://vota.arrl.org. There are many holiday-themed activities between now and the new year. Though the DARC Christmas Contest is a 2.5 hour contest focused on German amateurs, according to the sponsors, "foreign stations are always welcome to take part, and with the current conditions on 40 meters, they truly have an advantage in propagation over the DLs." If you hear "FF" as a contact-closer on CW, it means Frohes Fest (Merry Christmas). The YOTA Contest on December 30 is a mixed-mode contest with the operator's age as part of the exchange. It's the third and last segment of the 2022 YOTA Contest series. The SARTG New Year RTTY Contest is a 3-hour contest starting at midnight on January 1 Eastern Time (US). Exchange is RST, contact number, name, and "HAPPY NEW YEAR" with no abbreviations permitted. This sounds like a fun one, and an opportunity to ensure proper RTTY operation before the 2023 ARRL RTTY Roundup on the weekend of January 7, 2023. Don't forget the weekly NCCC RTTY Sprint sessions on Thursday evenings. Why not get some CW practice in over the next 2 weeks, and then join the weekly 2023 CWops Test (CWT) Series, which starts in January? Consistent effort, consistently applied... Contest Summary See the "Contests" section below for complete contest information. December 22, 2022 - January 4, 2023 December 22 December 23 December 24 December 25 December 26 December 27 December 28 December 29 December 30 December 31 January 1
January 2 January 3 January 4
News, Press Releases, and Special Interest Effective January 1, 2023, the Radio Amateurs of Canada has redefined the list of Sections. Here's a new map of the Sections. N3FJP has announced that he is ready for the change with new versions of various logging programs affected by the RAC Section changes:
From the comments on 3830scores, the recent ARRL 10-Meter Contest was something special for many this year. Everything from Jim Caron's, WT8P "Haven't seen 10 meters that active since I became a ham!," to the Cayman Amateur Radio Society's, ZF1A (ops: K7ZO, NN1C, W9KKN), "Wasn't that fun to have 10 meters almost all the way back? Compared to the last 7 years, it was great. Certainly better than anything since 2014. Who knows what awaits us in 2023? Let's hope we get 2013-type of conditions." John Kalenowsky, K9JK, writes: "I've been watching the log count for this past weekend's 10-Meter Contest. With 2 days to go, the log submission count for 2022 has just matched the most recent high count of 5,479 (from 2014), which had just topped the 5,378 from 2011. By how much will 2022's count top the count from 2014? Is this a first hint that Cycle 25 is really here?" The Radio Amateurs of Canada recently conducted an online survey open to all Canadian radio amateurs regarding amateur radio call signs in Canada. The purpose was to help inform policymaking on details like the use of special prefixes (e.g. VE0), the mechanism and timing of the release of SK call signs, the use of single-letter suffixes, and so on. You can read a summary of the survey results here. There's a vigorous discussion going on in the ARRL-Contesting group about self-spotting and the ARRL Rules. Bob Naumann, W5OV, responded to some previous messages on the topic. He said: "Simply put: self-spotting is no longer forbidden." See the text of the posting in the Conversation section below. QSO Parties are a fun and low-pressure way to exercise some contest muscles. Alan Sewell, N5NA, maintains a sortable list of them, as does Bruce Horn's, WA7BNM, contestcalendar.com. Vermont, Minnesota, and British Columbia kick off the 2023 season on the weekend of February 6. Tim Duffy, K3LR, announces: "Registration is now open for the 2023 Dayton Contest University (CTU) to be held all day on Thursday, May 18, 2023, at the Hope Hotel in Dayton, Ohio. This is the day before Hamvention opens in Xenia, Ohio. CTU 2022 Dayton was amazing - we expect 2023 CTU to be even better! Eight different countries have hosted CTUs over the past 14 years: USA, Australia, Russia, Germany, Italy, England, Brazil, and Finland. Over 8,500 students have attended these CTUs with more than 100 CTU professors sharing their contesting experiences. 2023 will be the 14th year for CTU Dayton. To give you an idea of the quality of the CTU content and activities, you can see videos and PDF presentations from past CTUs on their website. The 2023 CTU Dayton course outline will be posted once all of the courses have been confirmed. Check the website for updates. Each presentation is carefully prepared with up-to-date information. The CTU professors are experienced contesters and will share their knowledge. There are scholarships (registration fee paid) available for CTU through a grant from the Northern California DX Foundation (NCDXF) for students who are up to 25 years old. Please use the "contact us" button on the CTU website to get more information. 2023 student registration information is on the CTU website. CTU registration makes a great Christmas gift! As we did last year, if you want to sign up for the 2023 Dayton CTU and you have given a talk (or will give one by Hamvention 2023) about amateur radio to a ham radio club, Hamfest, or group by May 18, 2023, you qualify for a $10 discount on your registration fee. Please choose the "Registration with club talk discount" option to get the discount. Spreading the word about amateur radio is lots of fun and can save you money at CTU! Thanks to all of the CTU sponsors, including Icom America, DX Engineering, the Northern California DX Foundation, The YASME Foundation, the Radio Club of America, and CQ Magazine for making CTU possible. Thanks to Teri Grizer, K8MNJ; Amy Leggiero, N8AMY, and Jerry Haislip, K1SO, for all of their help with CTU. Special thanks to Scott Neader, KA9FOX, from qth.com for hosting and constructing the CTU headquarters website. "See you in Dayton at CTU 2023 and Merry Christmas," said Tim Duffy, K3LR. Chris Plumblee, W4WF, announces: "The 2023 Orlando Contest Dinner, sponsored by Icom America, has been set for February 10, 2023. The event has returned to the American Legion Department of Florida at 1912A Lee Road in Orlando. Tickets for the dinner are now available at https://floridacontestgroup.square.site." More details are available on the website. Note that this event is coincident with the Orlando HamCation. Attention CW and RTTY Sprinters! Ward, N0AX, writes: "The updated rules for the 2023 NA CW and RTTY Sprint rules are now online at ncjweb.com. Start times for the February/March Sprints have returned to 0000 UTC. The increased solar activity keeps 20 meters open long enough to remove the need for an earlier start time. Start times for the September Sprints have not changed. There are no other major changes but the operating frequencies now reflect what actually happens on the air: Suggested frequencies are above 3.525, 7.025 and 14.025 MHz on CW, and above 3.580, 7.080 and 14.080 MHz on RTTY. Changes in RAC sections will NOT affect Sprint scoring since provinces are used as multipliers. I have heard concerns from some new Sprinters that they might be disqualified due to large score reductions from logging errors. That rule (Rule 16) was originally written to deal with problems found in paper logs. Today, the only reason for a DQ is illegal or unethical operation. This should make newcomers less hesitant to give Sprint a try - we welcome new Sprinters! Also, don't forget that if you hear a CQ from one of the State QSO Parties going on at the same time or another contest, you can count the contact in Sprint if the other station gives you all of the required information. The other station does not have to follow the QSY rule if they don't submit a Sprint log. We hope to hear you on the air in 2023 and thanks for your previous participation. Please encourage your club members and other friends to join the fun! 73, Ward N0AX CW NA Sprint Manager The 2023 NA Sprint calendar CW 0000-0359 UTC, Feb 5 with Logs Due on February 12 0000-0359 UTC, Sep 10 with Logs Due on September 17 RTTY 0000-0359 UTC, Mar 12 with Logs Due on March 19 0000-0359 UTC, Sep 17 with Logs Due on September 24 What contest-relevant open-source software or hardware project did you find most interesting or useful in 2022? Let me know! Send me an email at contest-update@arrl.org. I'll summarize it for the January 4, 2023 newsletter. Word to the Wise 807 The 807 is a type of radio tube that found common use in RF and audio power amplifiers. 807 is more commonly used now as slang for a bottle of beer. Conversely, tubes are also informally called bottles. Sights and Sounds
Results and Records Just FYI, although the ARRL contest results website has not yet been updated with the results of the June 2022 ARRL VHF Contest, the results article was published in the December 2022 issue of QST. The Headquarters staff anticipates that the results will appear on the website in January, when staffing levels are back to normal. Operating Tip Always Send Corrected Call Signs Sometimes while running, we'll respond to a caller with, "K7XXX 5NN WWA," and they'll respond with a corrected call and the exchange, "DE K7XXR 5NN WWA." Always send the corrected call sign to acknowledge that the right call sign has been logged. Sometimes the logging program will take care of this for you for CW contacts if configured correctly, but for phone, you'll have to do it. If you do not acknowledge a corrected call, the other station may contact you again, slowing your rate, or they may just not log you because they heard you contact a station with a different call sign. Technical Topics and Discussion TinySA Ultra is a low-cost spectrum analyzer. It covers 0.1 MHz - 6 GHz at a price point of approximately $130. RTL-SDR has compiled a list of reviews; it appears that for many amateur radio tasks, it could be wholly adequate. User Datagram Protocol (UDP) is a protocol used for communication between applications on the same or different computers in a computer network. It's easy for application developers to use, and has a relatively low overhead. It's also the protocol used to coordinate logging operations between applications like WSJT-X, N1MM Logger+, and many others. When it works, it's great. But one of the characteristics of UDP is that it's not guaranteed to be reliable. Different UDP packets can arrive at the application out of order, and packets that are sent by one application may just be dropped. Packet loss can be made worse by high CPU loads, burst of network traffic, or even slow hardware. The application expecting UDP packets wouldn't generally know that a packet went missing. This situation doesn't happen often and is unlikely, but it can and does happen. To be sure you've logged all of the contacts you've made, you could cross-check the logged contacts in, say, N1MM Logger+, with those that were logged in WSJT-X, just to be sure. If you were intrigued by the AI conversation in the last newsletter and want to dive deeper into the underpinnings of machine learning, check out the "Applied Machine Learning" video series from Cornell. Conversation Self-Spotting in ARRL Contests Bob Naumann, W5OV, posted this message regarding self-spotting in the ARRL-Contesting forum. It's of general interest to the contesting community - Ed. Simply put: self-spotting is no longer forbidden. The evolution of this has been going on for several years. Self-spotting was first allowed in VHF and up contesting back in 2015 or so. Enter Social Media: For HF, the Contest Advisory Committee (CAC) opined, along with input from various regional constituents, that allowing entrants to use social media streaming would hopefully appeal to younger amateurs, and younger potential amateurs, but the risks of self-spotting by showing the front of a radio, or mentioning one's frequency in the stream, etc. were identified as potential risks of rules violation. In a controversial event a couple of years ago, a well-known remote station provider got a whole lot of publicity doing this, and while it's not the only driver for this, it was admittedly significant in the decision-making process. As policing the possible different platforms, methods, and the inevitable communication of what is construed to be self-spotting via live streaming, the CAC suggested that live streaming and self-spotting should be allowed for multi-op entries and for single op unlimited entries. The ARRL HQ Awards Committee decided instead to remove all restrictions on self-spotting for all classes of entry. Well, what about single op unassisted? It has been nearly 35 years (think about that) since K1EA added the ability for unassisted single ops to spot their search-and-pounce contacts in CT for DOS. Since then, single ops have been permitted to spot their search-and-pounce contacts without being accused of receiving spots, and being assisted. Likewise, there's no logical reason to preclude them from self-spotting, since self-spotting is no longer forbidden. So, unassisted single ops can self-spot, if they want. Also, it is inevitable that we will someday see SSB SDR skimmers and all of this will be moot. In the few recent contests where this (self-spotting) has been possible, all reports have been unremarkable about the impact of self-spotting. Yes, this is a new perspective. Many of us are uncomfortable with this change. Its time has come. The burden of policing this is too great, and just not worth it. Removing the restriction is a positive thing, further leveling the playing field by removing the advantage held by the very creative and sadly dishonest cheaters around the world, and I predict that CQWW will join ARRL's leadership in this area and stop forbidding self-spotting. Lastly, and significantly part of this decision, is that SSB is the lone contesting mode without automatic spotting; that's not fair either, so this is the right thing to do. The complete lack of sensational results from recent contests proves the point. 73, Robert E. Naumann W5OV Director of Operations 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 Contests December 22, 2022 - January 4, 2023 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 Test (CWT) , Dec 22, 0300z to Dec 22, 0400z; CW; Bands: 160, 80, 40, 20, 15, 10; Member: Name + Member No./"CWA", non-Member: Name + (state/province/country); Logs due: Dec 24. VHF+ CONTESTS AGCW VHF/UHF Contest , Jan 1, 1400z to Jan 1, 1800z; CW; Bands: 144 MHz, 432 MHz; RST + "/" + Serial No. + "/" Power class + "/" + 6-character grid locator; Logs due: Jan 9.
Log Due Dates December 22, 2022 - January 4, 2023 December 22 December 23 December 24 December 25 December 26 December 27 December 28 December 29 December 30 December 31 January 1 January 2 January 3 January 4 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, it features articles by top contesters, letters, hints, statistics, scores, NA Sprint, and QSO Parties. Subscribe to QEX - A Forum for Communications Experimenters. Published bimonthly, it 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 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 emailing 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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