 April 29, 2020 Editor: Paul Bourque, N1SFE | ||
IN THIS ISSUE
If you have a tower or are considering putting up a tower, please review DX Engineering's blog article "Tower Safety (Part 1): An Introduction to Climbing," not just for technical information, but also for the attitude and considerations necessary to safely install and maintain this equipment. Four QSO parties are on tap for this weekend, and the sponsors of these events are cooperating to make it easy for you to easily participate in all four at once! Indiana, Delaware, the 7th Call Area (WA, MT, ID, OR, NV, WY, UT, AZ), and New England (ME, NH, VT, MA, RI, CT) will be giving out state and county as the exchange. Take care, as the order for some state and county varies between events. For example: RUTVT for Rutland County, Vermont, and WAISL for Island County, Washington. The second weekend of May, Arkansas has the lone QSO party. For a DX contest, try the CQ-M contest but make sure you turn in your log, even if you have just one or two contacts! CQ-M rules state that a contact will only count toward a score if BOTH stations participating in that contact submit a log. Some new weekly RTTY events have been added; see the item in the News section below. Block off Thursday, May 14, to attend the FULL DAY of 2020 Contest University. This year is all online due to social distancing requirements and free to anyone to join via Zoom. Registration details are on the Contest University website. Tim, K3LR, Contest University Chair, assures that there is capacity for anyone who registers to be able to attend. There is no better opportunity to learn directly from the masters. The day will start at 8:30AM EDT. Complete information for all contests follows the Conversation section 30 Apr - 13 May 2020 April 30 May 1 May 2
May 3 May 4 May 5 May 6 May 7 May 8 May 9
May 10 May 11 May 12 May 13 Any contest or event where multi-multi, rover, or portable classes are allowed may be subject to rule changes due to the ongoing pandemic. It is always prudent to check the appropriate contest websites for the latest information. ARRL members can enjoy a new member benefit: They can now read the digital versions of NCJ and QEX online. Members now have exclusive access to four magazines, each with their own unique content: QST, On the Air, QEX, and NCJ. In the May 2020 issue of QST, Scott, K0MD, guest authored the "Eclectic Technology" column with a piece entitled "Artificial Intelligence and Radio Contesting." Scott speculates on a new feature you might find in your logging program in 2030: A contest mentor of sorts that uses AI (Artificial Intelligence) techniques to match your contest goals with real-time analysis of band conditions and available contacts from radio data. He foresees that current technology, applied to this purpose, could provide a contester better situational awareness and actual advice, so the operator could make better decisions, and ultimately, have more fun. Tim, K3LR, Contest University Chairman, has announced that "Contest University USA 2020 will be held online via Zoom on Thursday, May 14, 2020" and will be free to stream for all, starting at 8:30am EDT. Pre-registration is required. The outline of the day has been posted online. At the end of the day (6 pm Eastern Time) "Dave, K3ZJ, from CQ Magazine will present the 2020 CQ Contest Hall of Fame awards - live on the Zoom conference." A registration button for the Zoom video conference has already been posted on the Contest University website. Tim expects to be able to accommodate all registrants! According to Jeff, WK6I: "Sprints are popping up everywhere like the wildflowers here in the Sierra Nevada...." and includes weekend RTTY sprints, weekday RTTY sprints, as well as the RSGB Hope QSO Party RTTY segments. (WK6I via RTTYDigital Group) Japanese hams have additional frequencies on 160 meters and 80 meters. Before these changes, frequency restrictions made it difficult for JA hams to participate in the newer digital modes on these bands. One big contest implication: On the low end of 160 meters you'll now be able to hear JA hams from 1.800 to 1.875 MHz (in addition to the existing allocation above 1.9 MHz). Reports coming in via 3830scores from last weekend's Florida QSO Party show a large number of stations participating and adapting in ways that they might not have if not forced to by social distancing requirements. For example, K6ND and N2KW teamed up for a Multi-single Mixed Low Power entry, using K6ND's Pennsylvania station, N2KW operating via remote. Another: Instead of mobiles roaming the state, the Florida Contest Group contest sponsors arranged for certain call signs to "migrate" to fixed stations in multiple counties, emulating how a mobile might pick up and move. The "virtual mobiles" were appreciated by many participants, but maybe K7SV said it best: "I certainly missed the crazy mobiles running around the state, but the virtual stations helped. Perhaps next year do both!" Dick, K4XU, 7QP Manager, writes: "After last weekend's Florida QSO party, remember that there are four QSO parties next weekend: 7QP, New England, Indiana and Delaware. No matter where you live, you can participate in all four at once using N1MM Logger+ (and SD Logger - Ed.) It is the only weekend where this happens. N1MM Logger+ lets you enter all the exchanges as received without switching logs. For anyone outside of these four areas, it has a special QSO party called IN7QPNE. This does the same for them. Enter all exchanges as received. Anyone can participate in all four QSO parties at once. We truly appreciate the support of the N1MM Logger+ crew, especially K3CT, to make this happen. When the party is over, simply generate a Cabrillo log and send it to all four of the contest sponsors. There is no need to weed out non-counting contacts, they do it all. This has improved the participation in all four contests. As a result, the four parties together now make up the largest QSO party weekend of the year..." Paul, EI5DI, writes: "Anyone can participate in all four of next weekend's QSO parties at once using SD contest logger -- free from www.ei5di.com -- select the 7DEINE option. Enter all exchanges as received." To post individual scores for the Indiana, New England, and 7QP to the appropriate contests on 3830scores.com, check out this N1MM Logger+ group message from last year by NA6O with a Excel spreadsheet originally written by K0RC to do the score splitting for you. Delaware's score calculation is left to the reader. Tom, N1MM, notes that the Tuesday April 28, 2020 N1MM Logger+ update "will contain improvements to the logging program's wide area networking capabilities. This version includes improved support for the Hamachi VPN, as well as support for the SoftEther VPN protocol." The N1MM Logger+ team is also going to host a Zoom teleconference on April 29 for those interested in a "practical exercise where attendees will install, configure and connect their N1MM Logger+ stations to a hosted VPN. The teleconference will be conducted on Wednesday, April 29 at 3pm EDST (19:00 UTC)." Attendees will be working through the concepts in the downloadable document entitled "Distributed Multi-Op Contesting using N1MM+ with a Hamachi VPN_010." For more information and registration information see the N1MM Logger+ group message. Touch Portal is a "macro remote control for PC or Mac" that some hams are using to better automate their ham shacks. Buttons are placed on the screen, and "execute several actions with one press." The program works across a wide range of operating systems and devices, including those with older versions of operating systems, so you could find renewed purpose for those old smart phones or tablet devices. There's a free version that may well do everything you need. N3FJP's recent blog entry includes information on how his logging software can be used with the Wireguard VPN, and how to use his logger in the Hamvention QSO Party. Get all the details on his website. According to an article in the May 2020 PVRC Newsletter by Frank, W3LPL, "The Solar Minimum Likely Occurred Christmas Eve 2019," "Some of us have noticed a slight uptick in solar activity since Christmas Eve when two Cycle 25 spots -- AR 2753 and AR 2754 -- appeared simultaneously after 40 consecutive spotless days, the longest such stretch of Cycle 24. Only one of the five subsequent sunspots -- AR 2757 -- has been from old Cycle 24. Every sunspot over the last 12 months has been relatively weak and has had little effect on propagation. Although the date of solar minimum and the beginning of Cycle 25 won't be official until later this year, its highly likely that it occurred on Christmas Eve 2019. The next important event to look for is an energetic long-lasting Cycle 25 sunspot, hopefully this year. (from the Potomac Valley Radio Club PVRC Newsletter, May 2020) kcmil An abbreviation of "thousands of circular mils" which is a measurement of wire gauge. A "circular mil" is equal to the area of a circle with a diameter of one mil, or 0.0005067 square millimeters. Kcmil is used for larger diameter wires, while AWG (American Wire Gauge) is used for smaller diameter wires. DX Engineering's Blog, On All Bands, has posted commentary and a video entitled "Tower Safety (Part 1): An Introduction to Climbing." The videos feature Tim Jellison, W3YQ, who is "highly experienced and credentialed tower climber, certified rescue technician, and qualified climbing instructor." The RTL-SDR website featured a video of W1VLF using an ANC-4 noise canceller to help reduce solar inverter RFI (from his own house's solar system), visualized with an Airspy HF+ SDR. He discusses the theory of how it's supposed to work, hookup, and some of the challenges with real-world adjustments to optimize the noise reduction. It's worth watching the video to understand the interplay between the phase and gain controls and how sensitive they are to one another. "Antenna Vaporized by Lightning" - An accurate title of this video posted to YouTube by SP5KAB and tweeted by Sterling, N0SSC. 2020 ARRL RTTY Roundup preliminary results are now available. The winners for the W/VE and DX categories are listed, as well as for the ARRL affiliated club competition. The August issue of QST will print the top scores as well. The ARRL Spring School Club Roundup results are now available on contests.arrl.org. The Schofield Middle School Ham Radio Club's N4SMS dominated the School Club - Middle/Intermediate/Junior High - W/VE category once again. In the Category: School Club - Senior High - W/VE category, W0BHS, The Berthoud High School Radio Club edged out K9SOU for first place, and the School Club - Elementary/Primary - W/VE category winner was KD8NOM, Dresden Elementary Amateur Radio Club. Texas A&M's W5AC rocketed to the top of the School Club - College/University - W/VE category. Tim K9WX, writes: "The NAQP Challenge is an annual competition between three of America's premier ham radio contesting clubs: the Northern California Contest Club, the Potomac Valley Radio Club, and the Society of Midwest Contesters. Logs for individual club members who submit a log for any or all of the six North American QSO Parties sponsored each year by the National Contest Journal are automatically included in the NAQP Challenge scoring for their club. Scoring for the Challenge rewards both high participation and high personal scores, which means that both big guns and little pistols can contribute to the success of their club. The 2020 Challenge has reached the halfway point with the scores from February's NAQP RTTY contest. The standings show PVRC on top with SMC second followed by NCCC. But the scores are close, and all three clubs are still in a position to win the Challenge. Activity will resume with the July and August NAQP events." VOACAP (Voice of America Coverage Analysis Program) is a modeling tool for radio propagation to predict path losses and probability of successful communication between two points on the globe. VOACAP models can be used different forms, including stand-alone program and derivate works for your computer, as well as at least one online version. You can look for overall path predictions using the VOACAP.com website, and predict paths to various parts of the globe during contest periods. If you're targeting a specific location, you can use the steps outlined by the VOACAP.com site's owner OH6BG in a recent tweet to find the date and times of common gray line between two locations. BlinkySWR is "A tiny, cheap, simple, accurate, energy harvesting resistive SWR and power meter for SOTA and backpackers" by OK1IAK and OK1HRA. You can download the PCB files and firmware from the project website, or order a kit from RemoteQTH.com. Mike, N4CF, replaced deteriorating ear pads on his Yamaha CM500 headset by gluing on inexpensive generic replacements he found on eBay. You can read all the details in his May 2020 PVRC Newsletter article. On the Reverse Beacon Network Blog, Pete, N4ZR, published at "quantitative antenna comparison" of a PA0RDT clone mini-whip and Clifton Labs active whip antenna "using a 2-receiver Red Pitaya 122.8-16." He's inviting comments on his comparison. These small-form-factor antennas are interesting for SDR receive purposes since they take up such little room. There are more questions posed by the data collected, but Pete's conclusion is that "My full-sized Carolina Windom out-performs both smaller antennas by a large margin. But if you can't manage a large antenna, the mini-whip is an acceptable and very low-cost option." Here's a different sort of contest: The Hack-a-sat Space Security Challenge 2020. This is a competition put on by the US Air Force and Defense Digital Service to focus hacker "skills and creativity on solving cybersecurity challenges on space systems." They're asking groups to "Pull together a team for our Hack-A-Sat Capture The Flag. Participants who successfully complete a set of qualification challenges on cybersecurity and space this spring will be invited to the ultimate challenge: to (ethically) hack a satellite." The UCC12050 by Texas Instruments is a "500 mW, high-efficiency, 5 kVRMS isolated DC-DC converter" in a 16-pin SOIC package. That's a pretty small footprint, and it's even more impressive that it has a built-in transformer. If you'd like to see pictures of the insides, check out this tweet by Ken Shirriff that includes microscope pictures of a decapped one. According to Ken, the chip has two dies. "The first die uses power transistors to convert 5V to 8 MHz AC, which goes through the transformer. The second die rectifies the AC back to 5V DC. It works like a standard isolated DC-DC converter, but the remarkable thing is how they fit it all into a tiny surface-mount chip." When troubleshooting, it's good to keep in mind that parts like this exist. The nominal switching frequency is between 7.2 and 8.8 MHz, according to the data sheet. Bright Sides There are plenty of places to find pandemic-related bad news. I don't want to minimize the problems that are being faced the world over, or the existing and upcoming challenges that will have to be overcome to return to something resembling normalcy. But it seems that small accomplishments and victories at any level can help inspire and motivate. The average age of our hobby's demographic, 67 years old, is certainly in the "High Risk for Severe Illness" group. So while in-person activities are curtailed, there's been a forced uptake of alternative communication methods, like video conferencing. Some clubs have jumped right in, adapting by modifying meeting agendas and lining up speakers for video meetings. In this online world, it may actually be easier to line up club speakers when they don't have to travel to get to your meeting! Present conditions are an opportunity to re-engage with those club members whose attendance has dropped off - with everything online, club members that have been avoiding club meetings because of the need to drive (or any other reason) may be able to be involved in the club again. The "rising tide" of computer and video conference skills may encourage new radio interests. Updates to various ham software packages are seemingly more frequent and meaningful over the last few weeks. Maybe those authors are spending less time commuting, and are putting more time into their work. Some teams are adding functionality necessitated by the pandemic: Big kudos to the N1MM Logger+ team for rapidly adding functionality to enable and ease a transition to VPN use and distributed multi-multi operation. The cancellation of the May Dayton Hamvention rituals disappointed everyone. Hot on the heels of its cancellation, Tim, K3LR, announced that 2020 Contest University was moving online, and furthermore that it would be free for all attendees. A potential bright side of this news is that this year's "graduating class" could be larger than ever before. This is also an incredible opportunity to get those that are interested in radio contesting to attend, without having to commit to an entire weekend.
Extra time some have right now is being put towards tackling radio to-do lists. Even small fixes such as improving an internet connection can pay off during contest season. Some are taking the opportunity to completely rebuild their shacks, adding station automation capabilities that will also enable remote operation. When we're able to meet in person again, it'd be nice to think that we've gained some new skills to help us get even more out of our hobby, and that we were not only just able to adapt but to thrive. 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 30 Apr - 13 May 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, Apr 29, 1300z to Apr 29, 1400z and, Apr 29, 1900z to Apr 29, 2000z and, Apr 30, 0300z to Apr 30, 0400z; CW; Bands: 160, 80, 40, 20, 15, 10m; Member: Name + Member No., non-Member: Name + (state/province/country); Logs due: May 2. VHF+ CONTESTS Araucaria World Wide VHF Contest, May 2, 0000z to May 3, 1600z; CW, SSB, FM; Bands: 6, 2m; RS(T) + 6-character grid square; Logs due: May 8. SARL VHF/UHF Digital Contest, May 9, 1200z to May 10, 0800z; Digital; Bands: 50 MHz, 70 MHz, 144 MHz, 432 MHz, 1296 MHz; RST + 6-character grid locator; Logs due: June 1. 50 MHz Spring Sprint, May 9, 2300z to May 10, 0300z; not specified; Bands: 6m Only; 4-character grid square; Logs due: May 23. 30 Apr - 13 May 2020 April 30, 2020
May 1, 2020 May 2, 2020 May 3, 2020 May 4, 2020 May 5, 2020 May 6, 2020 May 7, 2020 May 8, 2020 May 9, 2020 May 10, 2020 May 11, 2020 May 12, 2020 May 13, 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 both magazines 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. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ARRL Contest Update wishes to acknowledge information from WA7BNM's Contest Calendar and SM3CER's Contest Calendar. | ||
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