Tiny Elephant's Contest Corner

The Latest Contest News -
A NARC Bulletin Exclusive

A monthly column by Ed Deichler, K2TE

Last month’s club meeting was especially enjoyable for me since the focus was on contesting. Doug, K1DG, one of the top contesters in the world, was the guest speaker who gave us a very entertaining talk on his experience in the World Radiosport Championship held in Seattle in 1990. This event was literally a who’s who of contesting as teams from 16 countries were assembled in Seattle during the Summer of 1990 in conjunction with the Goodwill Games. Each two-man team was limited to the same equipment and modest antennas to establish a level playing field. If you made the meeting, I won’t bore you with all the details. Suffice it to say that Doug and fellow contester and nice guy, John, K1AR, brought home the gold by winning first place in the 10-hour contest.

Doug had a lot of funny anecdotal from his experience in Seattle and the spirit of international friendship when hams get together. One memory that stands out is that the Russians were especially happy to be participating in the contest since things were rapidly unraveling behind the Red Curtain in 1990. My best memory of Doug’s talk, though, has nothing to do with the excesses and perceived rudeness that contesters seem to propagate. Doug related a story of an incident that took place as the Soviet Union was collapsing and Lithuania was trying to throw out their unwanted guests of 50 years. There was a very tense period when the Russians surrounded the Lithuanian parliament with tanks and weapons and threatened to crush the uprising. Doug happened to be tuning around the bands one night and heard what sounded like an exasperated net manager trying to copy East European stations. Doug recognized one of the Lithuanian calls from previous contests and dropped in to say hi. The fellow recognized Doug and urgently asked him to stay and just keep talking. With his commanding antenna farm, Doug soon took over and carried on conversations for hours with the Lithuanians and others on the frequency. Commercial TV stations got word of the frank accounts of what was going on in Lithuania from the hams talking to Doug and started listening. (The Russians had shut down the Lithuanian parliament’s station, so no other official word was getting out.) When the crisis finally passed, the Lithuanian government sent Doug a letter of gratitude for his efforts in letting the world know what was happening. Still think contesters are jerks ?

Following a talk like Doug’s, I’m all fired up to get going for the upcoming contest season. The weather has finally cooled enough where I can work on my remote antenna switch without fear of sweat shorting out my drill as I make holes for a bunch of SO-239 connectors. I am also refurbishing a TA-36 tribander that will go up on the short tower to give a second station some punch and band choices. I still need to climb my stairway to the stars and fix the supports for the 40 meter beam. Oh yeah - the KT34XA monster also needs to come down (ugh !).

Getting work done on the hardware side of things is not the only thing I have to get ready for the contest season. I have been having fun the past few months working stations on RTTY and am looking forward to RTTY contesting. As I mentioned last month, there is a RTTY DX contest sponsored by the Swedes that takes place late in August. I thought I had solved the idiosyncrasies of getting a popular RTTY contest program to work with my PK-232 TNC so I would be all set. However, when I tried to double-check the procedure to get the two to play, no dice. I believe the rule of thumb with software is that one bug can cause an infinite number of mutated behavior patterns. Bringing up the program and turning on my TNC gave me nothing beyond a canned preamble from the program. When I entered the keyboard mode, I could communicate with the TNC manually as I normally do when in “normal” RTTY. After logging off and doing some parameter checking, I reentered the program and brought up the TNC. This time, nothing worked. I swear software is the Achilles heel of modern man.

In the event I am able to get things up and running, here is what I can look forward to in September:

Hiram P. Maxim Memorial Birthday Celebration. 2-10 Sept.

If he was still kicking around, Hiram would be 126 years old this year. Last year he celebrated his 125th in a big way with several ARRL-affiliated stations and support stations creating mini-pileups by attaching a “/125” after their callsigns. The League gave out commemorative awards for working so many “/125” stations. Similar incentives are planned for this year, since the event generated a surprising amount of activity.

Stations will be signing “/126” and will indicate their position or support capacity in the ARRL organization, such as OO, Vice Director (VD), Section Manager (SM), and so on. Two changes from last year are that anyone holding an ARRL volunteer position and is an ARRL member is eligible to sign “/126”, and that ARRL life members are included as well.

The event lasts for a week so there is no rush to spend hours frantically trying to hunt down qualifying stations. Look for them on all bands, and all modes. Repeater contacts are allowed for credit. See the August QST, page 58 for complete rules.

All-Asian DX Contest. 2-3 Sept. (Phone)

This contest presents an opportunity to check the propagation and/or test out some of your contest ideas on hams on the other side of the world. Qualified countries span the globe from Siberia to the Indian Ocean and from Israel to Japan. I don’t have the exchange, but listen for the DX station’s information and repeat the same type of information back to him. If your wrong, he will correct you and you are on your way.

CQ Worldwide RTTY Contest. 23-24 Sept.

Here is one of the contests that I am anxious to try. By the time late September rolls around, I hope to have my RTTY contest bugs purged and be ready to go. I think this contest is a 30-hour maximum operating time event that starts 0000Z on the 23rd and runs through 2400Z on the 24th. Usual exchange for CQ Worldwide contests is the signal report and zone number. Contest logs go to CQ Magazine within 30 days after the end of the contest.

Well, time to get back to my fiddling with the antenna switch. See you all next month! 73, Ed

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