 January 3, 2024 Editor: Paul Bourque, N1SFE | ||||
In this Issue: Your usual Editor, Paul Bourque, N1SFE, will be resuming with the next issue. Brian Moran, N9ADG, is the Editor for this issue.
Upcoming Contests - Things to Do The ARRL RTTY Roundup is front and center the weekend of January 6. The mode is RTTY only, 80 meters through 10 meters. For those that haven't tried RTTY before: If you are set up for FT modes, you can run RTTY! There are many information sources that will get you going, one of which is rttycontesting.com; for more advanced topics, check previous years' presentations on ContestUniversity.com. Test your RTTY setup this Thursday evening (0145z Friday) with the inaugural Weekly RTTY Test. Alternatively, you can test your receive configuration by copying the ARRL digital transmissions which occur twice per evening (US time) on each weeknight. As January 6 is also the first Saturday in January, be on the lookout for ARRL Kids Day activity. Kids day events are held twice per year. The weekend of January 13, the North American QSO Party (NAQP) will fill the CW segments of the HF contest bands for 12 hours. The 2023 results show that over 1200 logs were submitted comprising 465,000 contacts. Last year, 10 meters was hopping! Perhaps it will be even hotter this year. This contest has a power limitation of 100 watts for all entrants. Contest Summary See the "Contests" section below for complete contest information. January 4, 2024 - January 17, 2024 January 4 January 5
January 6
January 8 January 9 January 10
January 11 January 12 January 13
January 14 January 15
January 16 January 17
News, Press Releases, and Special Interest The use of RTTY as a mode outside of contests is waning. The weekly RTTY Sprint practice sessions on Thursday evenings (US time), sponsored by the Northern California Contest Club, have been officially discontinued. HOWEVER, A new Thursday evening (US timezones) RTTY Contest is has started - The Weekly RTTY Test (WRT). Organized by Tim Shoppa, N3QE, and Ron Koenig, WV4P. It's a conventional, non-sprint RTTY contest in the same time slot as the recently-departed RTTY NS. RTTY neophytes are encouraged to particpate in the WRT, and the contest has a Facebook page to help get people going. CWT participants will be familiar with the "every unique call is a multiplier" rule. The exchange is name and state/province for US/VE, Name and country for DX. Larry, K8UT, notes: "The Mortty_v5 CW/RTTY Keyer is in its final stage of development and should be released in January. We've completed three rounds of Beta testing and all production components are on order. Some Key changes from Mortty_v4 to v5:
For you RTTY ops: There is also experimental RTTY code for SO2R RTTY (one cable, one com port, two radios) and RTTY Sidetone. Working with developers to enable that through their desktop apps. It might get posted as a separate download depending on how integration with loggers works. Stay tuned for that..." Larry also notes that announcements of ordering availability will be made to the MORTTY groups.io group first. Curt Bowles, VE3ZN, reflects in a blog post on how his radio life has changed since he decided to construct a "big gun" station. Beyond the nuts and bolts and towers and amps, he talks about the commitment required to maintain it, and how having access to such a station has changed his operating technique. One upon a time, when contests were over on Sunday evenings in the Eastern US timezone, hams would gather on a well-known frequency, 3830 kHz (there were no megahertz back then), and exchange reports of how well they did in the contest. Over time, hams in other timezones wanted to report their scores, and by then more people discovered email, so in 1995 or 1996 Dave Pascoe, KM3T, made an email reflector for the purpose of reporting scores. Fast forward to early December 2023: Dave announced the planned cessation of the 3830@contesting.com reflector on December 31, 2023, for a number of reasons, the primary one being that it is increasingly difficult to consistently deliver email messages. Then, last week, Bruce Horn, WA7BNM, webmaster of 3830scores.com, announced: "In preparation for the sunsetting of the 3830@contesting.com mailing list, I've added a new chronological list of score postings on 3830scores.com to mimic the list that is available on the mailing list archive. The new list displays all score postings for the past 3, 10, or 30 days and allows for weekly contests to be excluded (default) or included in the list. If a post is updated, the timestamp associated with it is updated to the time of the update. A horizontal line within the list separates postings that are new/updated since the user last viewed the page from those that are older (this functionality is dependent on the user allowing browser cookies). Previously visited links to specific postings are indicated by a screened-back text color. The site navigation menu at the top of the 3830scores.com page now includes a List Posts link to the new list. Happy contesting in 2024! 73 de Bruce, WA7BNM" Scott Davis, N3FJP, has updated a number of his logging programs for "the newer Prince Edward Island (PE) and Northwest Territories (NT) abbreviations where applicable." Updates for all of this programs are available for download from N3FJP.COM. The 20th International EME (Earth-Moon-Earth) Conference will be held this Summer in Trenton, New Jersey, on The College of New Jersey campus. The program includes sessions on all aspects of EME communications including antennas, amplifiers, software, operating, and so on. Associated with this of the event is a separate full day course on how to get started in Earth-Moon-Earth communications - EME101. For more information, see the conference website: https://eme2024trenton.org/ Word to the Wise Big Gun and Little Pistol There are no hard and fast definitions of either of these terms. Big Gun generally means that the station is capable of producing big signals and being able to maintain high run rates despite crowded band conditions. Big Gun also comes with the implication of tall towers, extensive antennas, amplifiers, and great radio locations. Little Pistols are stations that, despite missing one or many of the physical components of a Big Gun station, make up for what they don't have with strong operating skills and on-the-air "chutzpah." Sights and Sounds Part of Bob Shohet's, KQ2M, soapbox comments for CQ WW CW 2023: "Congrats to the ionosphere for nailing EVERY ARRL, WPX and CQ CW/SSB contest in 2023 with an M Class flare and/or CME! First time that I have ever seen/experienced this in 50 years of contesting." Dave Cuthbert, KH6AQ and Rob Van Geen, NH6V, teamed up for a portable operation, putting KH6AQ on the air for the recent Stew Perry Topband Distance Challenge. According to their post on the Topband list, they ran "1500W to a full-size quarter-wavelength wire sloping about 50° up to the top of a 150-foot Cook pine tree across the road from the beach. It ran off of two 130' elevated radials that were parallel to the coastline and perpendicular to the direction of North America and Europe... 35°. The feedpoint was back about 25' from the ocean and it even got occasionally hit by the large crashing surf (!)." They described their antenna as "pretty ideal." They also used a K9AY receive loop to minimize the effects of a noise source in a local neighborhood. You can see photos from their operation in their Google-hosted photo album for the occasion.
Steve Babcock,VE6WZ, has a new YouTube video on how you can use KiwiSDR radios around the world to listen to your transmitted signal. According to Steve: "This is not a new thing, but in this video I describe the method for those that may not be familiar with it." See below for information on getting your own KiwiSDR v2 hardware.
Results and Records Conditions during the ARRL 160 Meter contest early in December were lacking. It didn't seem to matter where you were on in North America - conditions were lousy. Operating Tip Benefits of Diversity on Receive If you have two receivers in your radio, listening with two different antennas at the same time, one in each ear, can yield benefits. Being able to hear from different directions can separate the stations in the sound field, making easier to identify callers that may be worth more points. Sometimes the effects of ionospheric fading can be mitigated, since as a signal recedes on one antenna, it could be increasing on the other. Technical Topics and Discussion ADIF stands for "Amateur Data Interchange Format" and is useful when contact log information needs to be exchanged between different applications, or processed by websites. ADIF has had many revisions over the years; one can keep current on the current and past standards via the ADIF website: https://www.adif.org.uk/. Changes to the ADIF standard are reflective of what's in vogue for operating: recent changes have seen the addition of fields for Parks on the Air (POTA) information, altitude (useful for Summits on the Air, or SOTA contacts), and so on. Using small Form Factor (SFF) PCs in the ham shack is a way to free up space for... more gear of course! Reconditioned SFF PCs end up on the usual online buying sites after they're tested and reinstalled with an operating system. They can represent a great value for a shack computer - for example, an HP Elitedesk 800 G3 with a 3.1GHz 4-core intel i5 processor, 16G of memory, 25GB SSD, 4k resolution DisplayPort output, keyboard, mouse, Microsoft Windows 10 Pro for... $110.00, currently on Amazon. Switching an inductive load as one might find with transformers, motors, and the like, can be tough on switch or relay contacts due to the back-EMF generated when the contacts are opened. Elektor Magazine's article on switching inductive loads discusses the theory behind switching at moments of zero-current, and provides a sample circuit for low power inductive loads. Version 2 of KiwiSDR hardware is orderable via kiwisdr.nz. According to the website, this version will have a new RF front end with programmable attenuator and gas discharge tube for better input protection, a new GPS chip, and better reverse supply voltage protection. See the Sights and Sounds section, above, for a video from Steve, VE6WZ showing how to access other KiwiSDRs around the world. LDMOS amplifier builders might find the surplus Eltek Flatpack2 series power supplies available on eBay to be useful. With 48-53.5v nominal outputs at 2kw to 3kw power levels, it's a straightforward way to power LDMOS pallets. Printed circuit boards that plug into the Elteks are also available on eBay - add a few components, and you're ready to get power in and out of these units and control them through their CANbus. Search github.com for "eltek Flatpack2" to get more information on these beefy power supplies, and example software to control them. Conversation Why Not Use Faster RTTY? RTTY contests conventionally use 45.5 baud as the transmission speed. However, if you're using a computer to send/receive RTTY you're likely able to send and receive RTTY at 75 baud, nearly twice as fast! At the higher speed, contacts are quicker, and rates can be higher. Configuration instructions for N1MM Logger+ are at https://n1mmwp.hamdocs.com/manual-operating/digital-modes/ - using-mmtty-for-75-baud-rtty, and you can use your favorite search engine to find relevant information if your setup is different. But where will you find others to work at these faster speeds? BARTG's SPRINT75 contest in April is the one place where 75 baud RTTY is the only mode in use. Higher RTTY speeds are allowed in the ARRL RTTY Contest, but because there are relative few people currently using 75 baud, everyone sticks with the slower speed. PS: Bud Mortenson's, VA7ST, website can help with troubleshooting your 75 baud configuration, especially if you have an issue with switching back to slow speed RTTY when S&P mode is used. 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 (filling in temporarily for Paul, N1SFE) Contests January 4, 2024 - January 17, 2024 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 , Jan 4, 0000z to Jan 5, 0300z; CW; Bands: 40; Maximum 13 wpm, RST + (state/province/country) + Name + (Member No./power); Logs due: Jan 11. VHF+ CONTESTS VHF-UHF FT8 Activity Contest , Jan 10, 1700z to Jan 10, 2100z; FT8; Bands: 432 MHz; 4-character grid square; Logs due: Jan 15. Log Due Dates January 4, 2024 - January 17, 2024 January 4 January 5 January 6 January 7
January 8 January 9 January 10 January 11 January 12 January 13
January 14
January 15 January 16 January 17 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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