Contester's Rate Sheet for May 21, 2003
*********************** Contester's Rate Sheet 21 May 2003 *********************** Edited by Ward Silver, N0AX SUMMARY o CQ WPX's Code Weekend is coming up! o Logbook of the World is QRV for Beta Test o Telephone RFI, Electric Fences, and Key Clicks...Oh, My! o W7YRV's V-Beam Array o PDA Logging Software o The Flip Side BULLETINS o No bulletins in this issue BUSTED QSOS o There were several errors in the rules for the West Virgina QSO Party rules published in June QST's "Contest Corral" this past week. QSO points for mobiles are CW - 3 pts, SSB - 2 pts, and 100 bonus pts for QSOs with W8WVA once per band and mode. WV mobiles add 100 points per county activated with minimum of 1 QSO. The correct Web URL is also http://www.qsl.net/wvarrl/wvqp2003.html. The ARRL Web site has been corrected. (Thanks, Clark W8TN) o The Baltic Contest (May 17 and 18) Web site is http://www.lrsf.lt/BContest/index.htm. The CQ WPX Web URL contained a typo and is actually http://home.woh.rr.com/wpx/. (Thanks, Bob W2SR) ANNOUNCEMENT & NOTICES FOR 21 MAY TO 3 JUNE 2003 Logs are due for the following contests: o May 21 - Low Power Spring Sprint, email to: [email protected], paper logs to: Radioclub OM3KFV, PO Box 129, 036 01 Martin 1, Slovakia o May 24 - Harry Angel Memorial Sprint, email to: (none), paper logs to: Harry Angel Sprint, WIA Federal, PO Box 2175, Caulfield Junction 3161, Australia o May 27 - SP DX RTTY Contest, email to: [email protected], paper logs to: SPDX RTTY Contest Manager, Christopher Ulatowski, Box 253, 81-963 Gdynia 1, Poland o May 27 - Florida QSO Party, email to: [email protected], paper logs to: Florida QSO Party, c/o Ron Wetjen, WD4AHZ, 5362 Castleman Dr, Sarasota, FL 34232, USA o May 28 - Helvetia Contest, email to: [email protected], paper logs to: Hermann Stein, HB9CRV, Bruelmatten 13, 4410 Liestal BL, Switzerland o May 31 - JIDX CW Contest, email to: [email protected], paper logs to: JIDX CW Contest, c/o Five-Nine Magazine, PO Box 59, Kamata, Tokyo 144-8691, Japan o May 31 - Holyland DX Contest, email to: [email protected], paper logs to: Contest Manager 4Z4KX, Israel Amateur Radio Club, Box 17600, Tel Aviv 61176, Israel o May 31 - Ontario QSO Party, email to: [email protected], paper logs to: Ontario QSO Party, Ontario DX Association, PO Box 161, Station "A", Willowdale, Ontario M2N 5S8, Canada o May 31 - Nebraska QSO Party, email to: [email protected], paper logs to: Nebraska QSO Party, PO Box 375, Elkhorn, NE 68022-0375, USA o May 31 - AGCW QRP/QRP Party, email to: [email protected], paper logs to: Manager, Carsten Steinhoefel, DL1EFD, Puetzstrasse 9, D-45144 Essen, Germany o May 31 - Microwave Spring Sprint, email to: [email protected], paper logs to: Microwave Spring Sprint, ETDXA/WU4O, Jeff J. Baker, 8218 Foxworth Trail, Powell, TN 37849, USA o June 1 - QRP to the Field, email to: [email protected], paper logs to: Jan Medley, N0QT, QRPTTF 2003, PO Box 1768, Socorro, NM 87801, USA o June 1 - GACW CW DX Contest, email to: [email protected], paper logs to: GACW DX Contest, PO Box 9, B1875ZAA Wilde, Buenos Aires, Argentina o June 2 - IPA Contest, CW/SSB, email to: [email protected], paper logs to: Alex Dutkewych, N2PIG, PO Box 211, Pulteney, NY 14874-0211, USA o June 3 - New England QSO Party, email to: [email protected], paper logs to: NEQP, PO Box 3005, Framingham, MA 01705-3005, USA The following contests are scheduled: Note that the following abbreviations are used to condense the contest rules summaries: SO - Single-Op; M2 - Multiop - 2 Transmitters; MO - Multi-Op; MS - Multi-Op, Single Transmitter; MM - Multi-Op, Multiple Transmitters; AB - All Band; SB - Single Band; S/P/C - State/Province/DXCC Entity; HP - High Power; LP - Low Power; Entity - DXCC Entity HF CONTESTS Baltic Contest - CW/SSB - sponsored by the Lithuanian Radio Sports Federation from 2100Z May 17 - 0200Z May 18. Frequencies (MHz): CW 3.510-3.600, SSB 3.600-3.650 and 3.700-3.750. Categories: SO-CW/SSB/Mixed, MS, SWL. Exchange: RS(T) and serial number. QSO Points: Baltic (YL/ES/LY) stations count EU - 1 pt and non-EU - 2 pts, EU stations count Baltic - 10 pts, non-Baltic - 1 pt; non-EU stations count Baltic - 20 pts, non-Baltic - 1 pt. Score: total QSO points. For more information - http://www.lrsf.lt/BContest/index2.htm. Logs due July 1 to [email protected] or PO Box 210, LT-3000 Kaunas, Lithuania. His Majesty King of Spain Contest - CW - sponsored by the Union de Radioaficionados Espa�oles (URE) from 1800Z May 17 - 1800Z May 18 (SSB is June 21-22). Frequencies: 160-10 meters using IARU Region 1 band plan. Categories: SOAB, SOSB, and MS. Exchange: RST and serial number or EA province. QSO Points: 1 pt/QSO. Score: QSO points x EA provinces counted once per band. For more information, send email to [email protected]. Logs due 25 June (SSB by 30 July) to [email protected] or [email protected] or Vocalia Concursos URE, Apartado Postal 87, 12200 Onda, Castellon, Spain. US Counties QSO Party - SSB - sponsored by The Mobile Amateur Radio Awards Club from 0000Z May 17 - 2400Z May 18. Frequencies (MHz): 3.880, 7.240, 14.275, 21.340, 28.340. Work fixed stations once/band and mobiles once for each county and band. Categories: Mobile, Fixed. Exchange: RST and county or S/P/C. County line QSOs count as one QSO but separate multipliers. QSO Points: US fixed stations - 1 point, US mobile - 15 points, all others - 5 pts, one station must be in a US county. Score is QSO Points � US counties (counted only once). Mobiles sum score from each state. For more information - http://www.stpaulisland.net/countycontest.html. Logs due June 18 to (US logs) [email protected] or Duane Traver, WV2B, 99 Oregon Hill Rd, Lisle, NY 13797-1002, non-US logs to [email protected] or Scott Nichols, VE1OP, 387 Rudderham Rd, Point Edward, NS B2A 4V6, Canada. CQ WW WPX Contest - CW - sponsored by CQ Magazine from 0000Z May 24 - 2400Z May 25. Frequencies: 160 -- 10 meters. Categories: SOAB, SOSB, SO-Assisted, -HP, LP, and --QRP, MS (10-min rule), MM, SO-Rookie, SO-Tribander-and-Single-Wire, SO-Band-Restricted. SO operate 36 hours max with off times at least 60 min. Exchange: RST + serial number. QSO Points: different continents - 3pts (14 - 28 MHz) and 6 pts (1.8 - 7 MHz), with North America - 2 pts (14 - 28 MHz) and 4 pts (1.8 - 7 MHz), with own country - 1 pt. Score: QSO points x prefixes worked (ie, N8, KA1, HG73, JD1) counted only once. For more information - http://home.woh.rr.com/wpx. Logs due Jul 1 to [email protected]. QRP ARCI Hootowl Sprint - CW - sponsored by the QRP ARC International from 2000 - 2400 local May 25. Frequencies (MHz): 1.810, 3.560, 3.710, 7.040, 7.110, 14.060, 21.060, 21.110, 28.060, 28.110 kHz. Categories: SOAB, SOSB, SO20-10, SO160-40, MOAB, DX stations are SOAB only. Exchange: RST, SPC, and Power or QRP ARCI number. QSO Points: members - 5 pts, non-members/different continent - 4 pts, non-members/same cont - 2 pts. Score: QSO points x SPC (counted once per band) x Power multiplier (<250mW x 15, 250mW - 1W x 10, 1 - 5W x7, >5W x 1). For more information -- http://personal.palouse.net/rfoltz/arci/holispr.htm. Logs due 30 days after the contest to [email protected] or Randy Foltz, K7TQ, Attn: Holiday Spirits Sprint, 809 Leith St, Moscow, ID 83843. MI QRP Memorial Day CW Sprint - sponsored by the MI QRP Club from 2300Z May 26 - 0300Z May 27. Frequencies: 160 - 6-meters. Categories: SOAB with classes A (<250 mW), B (<1 W), C (<5 W), D (>5W). Exchange: RST, SPC, and MI-QRP number or power output. QSO Points: MI-QRP members - 5 pts, non-member W/VE - 2 pts, DX - 4 pts. Score: QSO points x SPC counted once per band. If homebrew RX or TX, multiply by 1.25. If both RX and TX are homebrew, multiply by 1.5. For information -- http://www.qsl.net/miqrpclub. Logs to [email protected] or L. T. Switzer, N8CQA, 427 Jeffrey Ave., Royal Oak, MI 48073-2521, USA. Great Lakes QSO Party - Phone/CW/RTTY/PSK31 - sponsored by the Michigan DX Association from 0000Z May 31 -- 2359 June 1, SO stations work 36 hours max. Frequencies (MHz): 160 -- 2 meters, no repeater or satellite, CW - 3.560, 3.720, 7.090, 7.135, 14.075, Phone - 3.870, 7.260, 14.270, 21.370, 28.450. Categories: A (>100 W), B (5 -- 100 W), C (<5 W), D (Club & MO), E (CW only), F (Mobile), G (Digital, one of RTTY or PSK31). Great Lakes are MI, IL, IN, WI, MN, OH, PA, NY, VE2, VE3. Exchange: Name, S/P/C, Great Lakes stations also send county. QSO Points: Phone - 1 pt, CW/Digital - 2 pts, QRP or mobile - 3 pts. Score: QSO Points x Great Lakes counties (counted only once). Bonus points: 500 pts for QSO with W8DXI (once only), mobiles add 100 pts for each county with at least 10 QSOs. For more information - http://www.mdxa1.org/1aglqp.html. Logs to [email protected] (Cabrillo format) or Brian Pawloski W8BRI, PO Box 140012, Grand Rapids MI 49514-0012. VHF CONTESTS Six Club WW Contest - sponsored by the Six Club from 2300Z May 30 -- 0200Z June 2. Frequencies: 6 meters. Exchange: 4-digit Grid Square and Six Club member number if available. QSO Points: own country - 1 pt, other country - 2 pts, add 1 pt if QSO with Six Club member. Score: QSO points x grids. For more information - http://6mt.com/contest.htm. Logs due June 30 to [email protected] or Wayne Lewis W4WRL, Contest Director, 3338 South Cashua Dr, Florence, SC 29501-6306. NEWS & PRESS RELEASES While there were many big stories coming out of the Dayton Hamvention, for contesters one of the biggest was the ARRL announcing that the Logbook of the World (LOTW) program was going live for beta test. There is a sixty-day period for us to practice submitting log data and to give feedback to the developers at ARRL. The complete release story can be found at http://www.arrl.org/news/stories/2003/05/15/102/?nc=1 and the complete instructions for participating in the testing are on the LOTW Web site, http://www.arrl.org/lotw/#top. Speaking from my own personal history with software development, your remarks and observations will have the greatest usefulness if you take careful notes, save copies of any submitted data, log any and all messages received from the LOTW system, and are precise in your description of any problem or suggested change. This is just a test phase and all submitted data will be discarded before the system goes truly live. Look for some new products observed at the Dayton Hamvention in the next issue! Your editor had a great time, despite a little rain on Saturday. Attendance seemed a little dampened, but the lines at the major vendors seemed pretty intense. I saw a Florida voting machine in the flea market, as well. "For those who are planning to comment in the FCC inquiry about BPL, you may find it useful to read the five articles in the 2003 May issue of "IEEE Communications Magazine"." (Thanks, Eric K3NA) RESULTS AND RECORDS The results article for the 2002 10 Meter Contest has been completed and the Web version, including numerous tables and graphics is nearly ready for release. The 2003 RTTY Roundup package is also nearly ready for July QST. (Thanks, Dan N1ND) We're a little light in this section. Contest managers -- please put the Rate Sheet on your mailing lists to notify when your contest results are ready or any other significant public release of information occurs. Thanks! TECHNICAL & TECHNIQUE Do you have persistent telephone interference problems? The problem is often the phone. "Try the RadioShack ET-296 series phones (e.g. 43-874, white, $14.99). If this type of phone receives interference, try unplugging all other phones in the house, including modems, answering machines, satellite TV receivers, etc. One of these could be generating AUDIO interference and putting it out onto the phone line. If so, an RFI filter on the offending unit should solve that problem. RadioShack carries a telephone RFI filter (part number 43-150) and you can also use the K-Com RF-1." DSL filters may also work. (Thanks, Dave K6LL) If you're interested in another big amateur wire antenna array, Brian Short K7ON has posted photos of Roy W7YRV's big vee-beam array. "It operates on 160 -- 10-meters, with best results believed to be on 20-meters and has significant gain and directivity. The array consists of 18 towers each 65 high feet around a common center tower where the feedpoint is. These towers support 18 wires coming from the common center. Relays select which combinations of the wires are utilized at a particular time." The photos can be seen at http://www.k7on.com/w7yrv/index.htm. I wonder if Roy's call has anything to do with the fact that you can pronounce it, "Dubya Seven Wire Vee"? (Thanks, Brian K7ON) Larry W1GOR contributes a couple of cable lubrication recommendations just in time for the summer tower maintenance season. "Gearope is made by Kano Labs - http://www.kanolabs.com/. Gearope Gear and Cable Lubricant is sold in liquid form, and in spray cans. A gallon can could be divided and put into small containers for a club." Larry soaks a cellulose sponge in the lubricant and then slides it along the cable. "Another product is PreLube 6 Cable Lubricant sold by Champion Radio at http://www.championradio.com/misc.html." Both products are available as sprays and Gearope is also available as a liquid. Summer is also electric fence noise-finding season. There are several common sources of noise; the charger, foliage on the fence, and poor fence connections. Walking the fence line with a portable radio (use VHF AM, if possible) will quickly identify poor connections or an arc to nearby plants. The former should be repaired (use a lineman's splice of several turns) and the latter should be cleared as a fire hazard. If neither are in evidence, check the charger by disconnecting the fence and listening right at the charger. These are rarely repairable and usually need to be replaced if noisy. Ask the store clerk to fire up a new charger for you before buying another one. There has been a lot of discussion about key clicks in recent months. Some of the top rigs have been exhibiting wider-than-necessary signals due to sharp rise and fall times of their CW output. Without getting into the details here of what creates the bandwidth of a CW signal, I'm pleased to recommend a good article on the subject: An enlightening article titled "On the Occupied Bandwidth of CW Emissions", written by Doug Smith, KF6DX (the chief designer of the Ten-Tec Orion) is available at http://www.doug-smith.net/cwbandwidth1.htm. Additional information is available at Tom W8JI's home page, http://www.w8ji.com/keyclicks.htm. (Thanks, Earl K6SE) If you're into very portable operation, Dave NK0E has written a field contest logger for Palm PDA's. It's freeware, called GOLog. Along with the software, he has a little keying interface that GOLog can use to key your rig. It's called the Serial CW Sender, and the New Jersey QRP Club currently offers it as a kit. You can find GOLog at http://home.earthlink.net/~golog, and the Serial CW Sender at http://www.njqrp.org/palmserialsender/. The May/June 2003 issue of QEX also has an interesting article by Paul W1GHZ on a PDA logging program for VHF-UHF contest rovers called BD. The software is available for downloading at http://www.w1ghz.org. CONVERSATION The Flip Side A couple of issues back (9 April) we heard one side of the "Identify Yourself" issue from an acknowledged contest master, Dick Norton N6AA. Dick made several good points as to why not giving your call with every QSO can improve your rate and help manage a pileup. Not surprisingly, other opinions were heard. My editorial this time deals with some of those counter-points -- thanks to several readers that contributed their ideas. In general, I do not dispute the notion that the station running the pileup can maximize his or her rate (and those of the callers) by judiciously skipping the occasional identification. The key word here is "judicious". There is clearly a threshold for not ID-ing beyond which everyone's rate and error count begin to suffer. One reader writes "While I agree it isn't necessary to sign your call after every QSO, going more than a minute or so in a contest is, in my opinion, discourteous and selfish on the part of the pileup runner by maximizing his rate at the expense of others." I agree, and I think Dick would agree. Extended periods without an ID just cause problems for everyone, plus they may be in violation of the local rules for identifying. I don't believe that Dick is advocating not identifying yourself over a long period of time. If you read his editorial carefully, he is simply stating that short-term enhancements -- on the level of a few QSOs -- are available when the station running the pileup senses that it is an appropriate time to reduce the frequency of identification. I have observed at extremely close range an experienced operator surfing a wave of incoming callers very, very quickly and with a very high reliability on both ends. This was done repeatedly, but only at certain times when the density, savvy, and signal strength of callers indicated that there was some low-hanging fruit to be picked. The truncated sequences of QSOs generally consumed less than fifteen seconds but resulted in more than doubling our rate over that period. Another interesting consideration is the widespread use of packet and Internet spotting and the effect of too-infrequent ID-ing. By not ID-ing, the chances of having one's call mis-spotted are increased. In addition, it encourages people to make the QSO and "assume" the call. This leads to all manner of trouble on both ends of the log with penalties assessed for Not-In-Log (NIL) QSOs. With spots travelling world-wide in minutes, I would think that a high rate of identifying oneself would be a useful prophylactic against logging penalties. If you overdo the "incognito" act, some folks will become sufficiently irritated that they will start to retaliate by working and not logging the perceived offender. This often results in an NIL penalty. I can attest that I may spin the dial and tune away if more than a few QSOs go by without an ID. Even if this doesn't result in a NIL QSO, my call still remains out of your log. To be fair -- how many of us are using the poor, "Last Two" technique during a contest? This style of operating was created for DX nets, not high-speed contests. It's demonstrably less efficient for caller and callee than giving your full call because of the extra back-and-forth to get the caller's complete call. If you think not ID-ing is frustrating for the station trying to get through the pileup, "last two" is just as frustrating on the other end, if not worse. People are not shy about asking "What's your call?" these days. Dealing with these callers can cause more disruption than ID-ing at frequent intervals. If the caller has to work the station to find out the call, the chances of the QSO being a dupe (and wasted time) are increased on both ends -- not very efficient for anyone. At the least, the rhythm of the pileup are disrupted by the caller injecting the question into the QSO. Personally, I have found that a consistent rhythm is helpful in controlling a large pileup because everyone knows what you're going to do and when. Finally, some of the top operators, such as N5TJ and OH2BH, have effectively demonstrated that giving the call nearly every single time does not automatically disqualify you from making a big score and winning. This coming weekend in the WPX CW contest, with exotic prefixes in abundance, we will all find our accuracy taxed to the limit. If you are fortunate enough to be on the right end of such a pileup, be sure to send your callsign frequently enough to keep it correct in all of our logs. When in doubt, send the call out. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The Contester's Rate Sheet wishes to acknowledge information from the following sources: WA7BNM's Contest Calendar Web page - http://www.hornucopia.com/contestcal/ ARRL Contest page - http://www.arrl.org/contests/ SM3CER's Web site - http://www.sk3bg.se/contest/
