 December 20, 2023 Editor: Paul Bourque, N1SFE | ||
In this Issue: Your Editor, Paul Bourque, N1SFE, is on leave. While he's out, Brian Moran, N9ADG, is filling in as ARRL Contest Update Editor.
Upcoming Contests - Things to Do The next few weeks might be a time to try something new, like one of the contests that occur during the week, or you can drop in to one of the Christmas or New Year's contests. There's one contest during the weekend of December 23, the RAEM CW Contest, which lasts 12 hours. Although there are some weekly contests still scheduled to take place on the evening of December 24 or on December 25, you might want to check the contest sponsor's website to make sure they're in fact still going on. Things get going again during the weekend of December 30, with the RAC Winter Contest, the Stew Perry Topband Distance Challenge, and the third round of the YOTA contest. For the RAC Winter Contest, you'll find the rules on RAC's contesting results page. Think of it as the HF contest bands plus 6 and 2 meters, mixed mode. Because the C in RAC refers to Canada, contacts with stations in Canada count for 10 points, others only count for two. There are some special RAC-suffixed stations, which are worth 20 points. Multipliers are the 10 provinces and three territories. See the rules for additional information on multiplier abbreviations, entry classes, and so forth. The Stew Perry Topband Distance Challenge is 160 meters, CW only. The exchange consists of four-character grid square designators, which we're all finally familiar with because of the popularity of FT modes. Scoring is by power level and distance; because power level isn't exchanged, the suspense of final scores for this contest isn't wholly diminished by 3830scores.com. In this contest, plaque-worthy performance criteria change yearly at the whim of the plaque sponsors. The YOTA contest, which is a collaboration between the IARU Region 1 Youth Working Group and the Hungarian Amateur Radio Society, is for "Increasing youngsters activity on the air." Participation in this CW and SSB contest is open to all, with specific categories for those aged 25 and under, and for those that are over the age of 25. The exchange is the operator's age. From examination of the results of previous sessions, participation is dominated by Region 1 amateurs; there's nothing to keep amateurs in other regions from playing, except awareness of the contest. Contest Summary See the "Contests" section below for complete contest information. December 21 - January 3 December 21 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
News, Press Releases, and Special Interest The DailyDX notes that the UK licensing authority, Ofcom, has put forth changes to amateur radio licensing procedures. These changes will take effect over time, and were done to allow "greater operating freedom for people using amateur radio, while making the process of getting and using a license simpler and clearer" according to the Ofcom document. Among the many changes, there will be some new call sign formats, increases in permissible power levels for all license classes, the ability for full license class amateurs to use up to 1000 W of output power, and an expansion of the license classes eligible to use remote operation. These changes will be phased in starting in 2024. The biggest solar flare in years made it more difficult to communicate via radio on December 14. According to the Space Weather Prediction Center, an X-ray event exceeding X1 caused "wide-area blackouts of HF radio communication for about an hour" on the sunlit side of Earth. This event was big enough to get notice by the national press, with coverage including pictures from NASA. Registration for Contest University (to be held May 16, 2024, at the Hope Hotel in Dayton, Ohio) is now open. Now in its 15th year, this event is held the day before the opening of the annual Hamvention and is popular enough to suggest early registration to be able to receive the day's printed handouts. Materials from previous years are available on the Contest University website. Potential summer employers of college-age amateurs: Kids these days are using Handshake, Indeed, and LinkedIn to find their summer jobs and post-school opportunities. At least one radio gear manufacturer includes the "Amateur Radio" key phrase in their job postings on Indeed. The Thursday (US) evening NS RTTY Sprint sessions, sponsored by the Northern California Contest Club, have come to an end. According to Ed Radlo, AJ6V, posting to the CQ-Contest email reflector: "A few months ago, the team that manages this contest, which has been sponsored by the NCCC (Northern California Contest Club) for many years, conducted an in-depth study at whether this half hour Thursday night contest is still viable, given the low and declining participation experienced over the past couple of years. Unfortunately, since this study of a few months ago, the participation in the RTTY NS has declined even further. Therefore, the contest management team has come to the painful conclusion that it is time to say farewell to the Thursday night RTTY NS, effective immediately."
Word to the Wise You are a contender if you participate in a contest and send in a log to be scored. Make sure you get those logs in before the log deadlines! Sights and Sounds
Steve Babcock, VE6WZ, has added a video to his BOG tutorial, "BOG Combining and switching in the shack," where he talks about the switching system he uses to choose between directions and combine signals. He puts special emphasis on a "low-impedance ground plane to minimize noise ingress." Mel Ming, N7GCO, suggested that Contest Update readers would be interested Bob Wilson's, N6TV, presentation to the Spokane DX Association: "Basic Station Automation Techniques & Recommendations." Results and Records Andy Goss, AA5JF, is responsible for the results article on the recently completed ARRL 10-Meter Contest. The article should appear in mid-2024, but he needs your pictures and comments now, before the experience fades. He's especially interested in hearing from stations outside of "North America and North-Central Europe" and those stations that are contending for the top spots in their respective category. If you've already submitted comments via the log SOAPBOX line, via 3830, or as part of the website log submission process, you are good to go. Otherwise, send Andy an email. Operating Tip We've traced the RFI! It's coming from inside the house! Have you checked your noise floor lately? RF interference can be horrific and negatively affect your contest scores. Performing a periodic noise audit can help you stay on top of things. Power a receiver from a noiseless source such as a battery and turn everything else off in your location at your circuit-breaker panel. Note the noise levels on each band, then turn everything on again. If you detect a difference, it could be time to do a thorough search for the offending radiator. Start by turning off each breaker again until the noise abates -- that's the circuit that has the device-making noise. Usually it's a switching power supply, but unusual sources have included arcing filaments inside incandescent or halogen bulbs, marginal or defective fluorescent bulbs or ballasts, arcing thermostats, space heaters, LED lights, wall dimmers, variable-frequency drives on furnace or A/C motors, damaged underground feeders to outbuildings, and marginal connections where arcing is occurring. Technical Topics and Discussion OM Power's new OM2002W is a water-cooled LDMOS amplifier for 2 meters. OM Power's website says it's rated at "1800 W CW, SSB, and 1600 W AM, FM, and digital modes, 50% duty cycle," though I doubt that means one day on, one day off. It's nice to see the application of water-cooling trickling down from computer applications. The OM Power website does not yet list details on US availability. José Nunes, CT1BOH, tweeted an analysis of propagation paths from Bouvet Island to various continents, based on the island's terrain-blocking just eight degrees above the horizon. The results are... not good for some directions, especially on higher bands. You can also model your own location here. Conversation Out-of-Band Communications Email spam. Text-message spam. Phone-call spam. We all get it to varying degrees, but how we handle it determines whether it gets the better of us. One member of a group chat was recently considering removing their email address from a popular call sign lookup database after they started to get spam emails for a non-ham-related business. They suspected that their email was gleaned from that online listing. I was encouraging them not to remove their email address. Being reachable via email is worth the inconvenience of deleting some unwanted messages because:
Furthermore, it was unlikely that the email address was actually gleaned from the ham-related database. It was more likely to have been released as part of a data breach (check to see if your email address has been part of a known breach at https://haveibeenpwned.com/). Many email providers do a reasonable job at spam filtering (but yes, some do not). An example of such a provider is Google's Gmail, but there are others. I use a Gmail address for public group interactions and some ham contact databases, and then use some techniques to automatically direct email into different folders and track email address usage. With this one simple trick, I keep the utility of email, and spam stays manageable. That's all for this time. Remember to send contesting-related video links, stories, book reviews, tips, techniques, press releases, errata, schematics, club information, pictures, stories, blog links, and predictions to contest-update@arrl.org. 73 and Happy Holidays! Brian, N9ADG (filling in temporarily for Paul, N1SFE) Contests December 21 - January 3 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 Walk for the Bacon QRP Contest , Dec 21, 0000z to Dec 22, 0300z; CW; Bands: 20; Maximum 13 wpm, RST + (state/province/country) + Name + (Member No./power); Logs due: Dec 28. 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 21 - January 3 December 21 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 ARRL Information Click here to advertise in this newsletter, space subject to availability. Your One-Stop Resource for Amateur Radio News and Information No other organization works harder to promote and protect amateur radio. Membership supports benefits, services, programs, and advocacy to help you get (and stay) active and on the air. Membership includes access to digital editions of all four ARRL magazines: QST, On the Air, QEX, and NCJ. 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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