 July 7, 2021 Editor: Paul Bourque, N1SFE | |
IN THIS ISSUE
This upcoming weekend, try the IARU HF World Championship. This 24-hour contest conveniently starts at 1200z on Saturday, finishing up in time for you to mow the lawn or do other chores on Sunday. CW and/or SSB are the modes, you can decide to do one or both. Make sure you use your ITU Zone as the exchange. For stations in the lower-48 states, ITU zones are 6, 7, or 8. For VE stations, zones 2, 3, 4, or 9. The next weekend, the NAQP RTTY Contest is a 12-hour contest that is quite popular, starting at the have-Saturday-brunch-and-contest-too time of 1800z; single-operator classes only score the first 10 hours of operation, multi-two class can go the full 12 hours. All classes are limited to 100 watts. Single ops can join up with four others to make a team and register that team ahead of the contest. Then you'll have to get on to "support the team." I've always thought that a "World Wide VHF Contest" was a bit aspirational; sure, the CQ World Wide VHF contest is taking place across the entire globe. But to expect to be able to work lots of different countries, world-wide? With the conditions that have been occurring on 6 meters recently, it doesn't seem so unlikely after all! Multipliers are unique grids; the contest is 27 hours long - don't forget to read the rules! BUSTED QSOS Etienne, K7ATN, noted this about an item in the last issue: "For your note on the ARRL EME contest, you feature 2m operation but the date for the first weekend that you give is 2.3GHz and up. 144MHz would be the November and December weekends." Complete information for all contests follows the Conversation section 8 Jul - 21 Jul 2021 July 8 July 9 July 10 July 11 July 12 July 13 July 14
July 15 July 16 July 17
July 18
July 19 July 20 July 21 With the recent tropical storm activity in the Caribbean and the potential for landfall in the US, here's a reminder to please maintain your situational awareness when finding a frequency - there could be emergency or relief communications occurring that you may not be able to hear. The Hurricane Watch Net (HWN) and WX4NHC/National Hurricane Center frequencies are 14.325 and 7.268 MHz, and there may be country-specific nets on other frequencies. You can find the latest news on amateur radio and hurricanes on the ARRL Recent News page. Six meters has been exciting over the last week or so, with reports of excellent inter-continental propagation. US hams have been enjoying many contacts with Asia and the EU. Craig, K9CT, worked a few new ones on July 2: "Six meters was amazing today! DXCC total for 6m went from 128 to 141!" The Pacific Northwest has even been getting in on some of the action, with some stations reporting new countries worked on 6 even with antennas like "a 20 meter dipole with an antenna tuner." You can't work them if you don't try! Scott, N3FJP, notes that his NAQP Contest Log 5.3 is now available via his website. According to Scott: "We have updated the NAQP software to also support scoring for K1USN SST! Just click settings > Setup, and select K1USN SST on the Setup form. You can also click View > K1USN 3830 Scores Submission Info for your submittal information." In the upcoming IARU HF Championship contest, look for W1AW/KL7 and NU1AW/5 as Headquarter (HQ) station multipliers. IARU officers in the contest are also multipliers, so IARU President Tim, VE6SH, and IARU Secretary Joel, W5ZN, will be actively handing out the "AC" multiplier. For more IARU headquarter call signs, try the NG3K website for Announced HQ Operations, and use the 2021 call history/pre-fill file with your logger that is being compiled by Joe, OZ0J, and Bob, N6TV. Here's a nice feature: Joe, OZ0J, and Bob, N6TV, have provided a way to test that you've set up their IARU 2021 Headquarter call history file correctly for the IARU HF World Championship contest: After you've unzipped the downloaded file, examined the Readme.txt, and have added the file to your logger, try entering these call signs into your logger's entry window, verifying that the information is shown correctly:
"If, for these 2 call signs, you get an ITU zone, you have not installed the correct file." Drones are increasingly used as tools for getting antenna wires into trees, surveying site lines, and so on. To legally fly a drone in the US for non-commercial purposes, one must have passed TRUST - The Recreational UAS Safety Test. Free training for this is now available, after which someone can take the test from one of the (currently) 16 organizations that can administer the test. (DPReview)
Peter, KA6U, is planning a nearly 4-month road trip, taking along EME gear for 144 MHz, 222 MHz, and 70 cm. He'll be operating from the following states, in temporal order: FL, SC, NC, VA, DE, CT, RI, MA, VT, NH, ME, NY (upstate), MI, WI, MN, ND, SD, NE, OH, WV, KY, TN, MS, AL. He plans for operating on the "days with the best EME conditions, basically the 14 best days of each month." He plans on activating at least 40 grids. He will also be taking advantage of meteor scatter and sporadic E propagation as they occur. The operating plan is posted on the KA6U QRZ.com page, and Peter will be responsive via his email address. DX Engineering is now the North American distributor for InnovAntennas. "DX Engineering will initially only carry the XR Series antennas, but will be adding other InnovAntennas antennas in the future. The company is in the process of making the XR Series available at DXEngineering.com. Please check website for availability. Look for online announcements as additional InnovAntennas models become available through DX Engineering." With a recent update to N1MM Logger+, Version 1.0.9165 (June 29, 2021) the Elecraft K4 joins the list of supported radios. Previous versions of N1MM Logger+ worked with the K4 by using the N1MM Logger+ settings for the K3. John, K1AR, wrote regarding his post to the CQ-Contest email reflector: "Many of you have heard by now that Mark Haynes, M0DXR, and family recently suffered a devastating house fire. In short, it's a total loss. For those of you who don't know Mark, he's a world-class contester -- one of our own -- who can be heard from M6T, K3LR, G9W and other calls. Just a few weeks ago, Mark joined the CQ WW Contest Committee as our newest member. If possible, I'd like to ask that you consider donating to a GoFundMe page that has been set up to help with the family's out-of-pocket expenses and the portions of his loss that will not be covered by insurance. The need is real and immediate. You can find out more information at: https://www.gofundme.com/f/house-fire-renders-family-homeless. Thanks, in advance, for your generosity and support." Scott, K0MD, also tweeted an appeal for support. WinKeyer Years ago, Steve, K1EL, found that generating dots and dashes for CW using Microsoft Windows and simple transistor switching was problematic. Windows was not a real-time operating system, and relying on the shared CPU for timing functions caused erratic generation of the proper timing. His solution was the WinKeyer, an external integrated circuit dedicated to CW keying tasks driven by the computer sending commands and characters via a serial port. Steve's IC also included support for paddle and speed inputs. His solution became supported by popular logging programs, and over the past fifteen years he has released new versions of his product with new interfaces, features, and functions. In addition to having his own set of products based on his ICs, his chips have been incorporated in radio interface products made by other manufacturers. Portions of the WinKeyer protocols have been emulated in other software and hardware. European GNU Radio Days were held June 24-26, 2021, focused on the various users of GNU Radio in the EU, regardless of their application. The conference featured presentations, demonstrations, tutorials, with an entire day for ham-related content in conjunction with the German ham radio conference SDRA. You can find the content on YouTube. Youngsters on the Air First-Round Contest Claimed Results Posted, Next Round is July 18. Read The Rules This tip is from Etienne, K7ATN: Read the rules. According to his experience with SOTA operations, "...being familiar with a contest or an event's rules could reduce newbie questions by about half. And make them more successful to boot." Part of the ARRL Learning Network Webinars, tune in for this one to help you with your antennas and feedlines: "Designing Coiled Coax 'Ugly' Baluns" by John Portune, W6NBC. Thursday, July 8, 2021 @ 8 pm EDT (0000 UTC on Friday July 9). No more guessing allowed! After this presentation, you should be able to calculate the amount of coil needed in your application. Joe, K1JT, announces: "WSJT-X and MAP65 Users: We are pleased to announce that a public Release Candidate WSJT-X 2.5.0-rc3 is ready for download by beta testers. On Windows the installation package also includes MAP65 3.0.0-rc3. See the Release Notes for changes since WSJT-X 2.5.0-rc2. We are especially interested in feedback from users of the new mode Q65 and the separate program MAP65. If you have been using Q65 with WSJT-X 2.4, 2.5, or MAP65 3.0, please send us a summary of your experiences. If you have found bugs, please send us details..." For more information, please see the WSJT-X Home Page. HF multiplexers could be the answer to some operating requirements. Given a three-band antenna and a triplexer, one could have three stations on the air simultaneously, which is handy for Field Day. A tri-bander, triplexer, and two radios is a good path to SO2R. There are some commercial solutions from Low Band Systems and VA6AM; you could also build your own low-power triplexer with VA6AM's blog post from 2017. Remember: "Never use multiplexers without bandpass filters also connected." TinySA is a spectrum analyzer and signal generator, in a form factor similar to the various NanoVNA devices, and price point that makes it appealing as an impulse purchase. One person's review can be summarized as "It'll never substitute for a larger, full-featured instrument, but if your only need for a spectrum analyzer is to design the occasional filter or check signal quality, the tinySA is a pretty good deal." Building Blocks The Brickit app works like this: Using your iPhone, you spread out a bunch of LEGO pieces, and take a picture of them. The app will identify various pieces that you have, and suggest new ways to assemble them. Here's a video clip of it working. The application was released a year ago, and has seen multiple releases since then, but only recently was noticed by the mainstream press. It's a great concept! But I'd rather use it for radio applications. Just being able to catalog various parts that are on hand by taking a picture of them? Winner! Sure, sure, getting the values of assortments of parts like resistors and capacitors entered would be a chore -- let's gloss over that for now. But assuming we could get an automatic inventory of what we took a picture of to determine what was on hand, what then? I'd like to be able to see what projects I could build from my inventory, or if there were just too many things (what a problem to have!) be able to narrow it down to "a QRP transmitter for 20 meters." Combined with what some friends may have lying around, maybe something even more ambitious. Or, imagine if instead of discrete parts, one could take a single picture of a station, and get an inventory listing each visible piece of gear. That could be useful for insurance purposes, or even for disposal of an estate. Google and others already provide a "reverse lookup" for images, which uses your image to find information or other images like your image. For contesting, how about a recommender that inventories the equipment you have, your antennas, your location, then factors in the answers to a few questions about the type of operating you like to do, your short-term contesting goals, and then suggests a contest for the weekend? And then given your longer-term goals, can evaluate your scores reported to 3830scores.com, and suggest an improvement plan? That sounds a lot like an Elmer! 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 8 Jul - 21 Jul 2021 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, Jul 8, 0000z to Jul 8, 0100z and, Jul 9, 0200z to Jul 9, 0300z; CW; Bands: 40m Only; Maximum 13 wpm, RST + (state/province/country) + Name + (Member No./power); Logs due: July 15. VHF+ CONTESTS IARU Region 1 70 MHz Contest, Jul 17, 1400z to Jul 18, 1400z; CW, SSB; Bands: 70 MHz; RS(T) + QSO No. + 6-character grid square; Logs due: July 26. Also see SKCC Weekend Sprintathon, Worldwide Sideband Activity Contest, above 8 Jul - 21 Jul 2021 July 8, 2021 July 9, 2021 July 10, 2021 July 11, 2021
July 12, 2021 July 13, 2021 July 14, 2021 July 15, 2021 July 18, 2021 July 19, 2021 July 21, 2021 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, 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. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ARRL Contest Update wishes to acknowledge information from WA7BNM's Contest Calendar. | |
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