Tiny Elephant's Contest Corner

The Latest Contest News -
A NARC Bulletin Exclusive

A monthly column by Ed Deichler, K2TE

A Class Act

Last month I touched on the sudden increase in sunspot activity around the end of March. There was a lot excitement as 10 and 15 meters stayed open to the Far East and Southern Asia well into the evening hours. Sunspot peaks and valleys are a nominal 28- day cycle; sure enough, things dropped on these bands around the middle of April. As I sit here writing this, the solar flux index has rebounded 20 points from a week ago, albeit prefaced by a DX-killing flare. Oh well; can’t have arm-chair DX ALL the time.

The month of April spotlighted activity from the far-flung islands of the French Polynesia region. This island group centers around Tahiti in the South Pacific. Recent changes in the DXCC rules as part of the ARRL’s DXCC 2000 program now permit areas of a country that are separated by more than 250 km to qualify as a new DX entity. With that in mind, Bob, N6RJ, and his son, W6KR, hopped a plane for a DXpedition in the tropics. They had the DX hounds chasing furiously after them as they spent a week from the Austral Islands followed by a second week in the Marquesas Islands.

The month of May brings about a respite from chasing DX as the inevitable Spring chores demand attention. I hope a lot of you found some goodies at the Rochester Hamfest and have had a chance to play with them. May also means doing some antenna repairs or some expansion of the antenna farm. It is while contemplating antenna repairs or a new project that I ponder ideas for a simpler system that has the same performance. I’m sure all of us have mulled over a bunch of “what ifs” as we delve into a project. These ideas begin to sort themselves out and the good ones build a momentum that begins to look for a release. With antenna projects, I often fret over the logistics and coordination that usually bear no relation to the physical size of the project; i.e., it takes just as much energy to put up a dipole as it does to put up a 2- element quad. The stress of what to do and how to do it continues to build until my feeble brainwaves light the idea-bulb - Take it out to FIELD DAY!!

OK, so I tend to get a little excited about Field Day. There is good reason to be so proud, what with NARC winning the contest the last three years in a row. Being number 1 overall, however, is only a small part of Field Day. NARC Field Days have traditionally been one of the largest groups in the country, and the recent string of top finishes just adds a little more notice. It is our consistency of participation from all the diverse elements of the club that is the real reason for our success. Every year we are lucky to have new people willing to jump in and give it a try, whether it be helping with tower setup, volunteering as a station master, building an antenna or junction box, or just being an unselfish “gofer”. We are also lucky to have top-notch contest veterans who have not forgotten those moments when they once shyly looked on as a patient Elmer explained some facet of ham radio. We also have those folks who just enjoy the get- together for a 24-hour eyeball ragchew that always seems to give Field Day the flavor of a relaxed picnic. In many ways it is this picnic atmosphere - and maybe some great New England weather - that kind of flows through new and old members alike to make participation enjoyable.

This year’s Field Day production is once again in the hands of Incident Commander and Stuckee Fletch, N1MEO. Coming off a year of going bigger and better, Fletch suddenly finds himself with a new Field Day script courtesy of the ARRL. As you may have read in previous issues of the NARC Bulletin, operation on radio-teletype (RTTY) and other digital modes is being given special billing this year to encourage activity. For those who have operated the digital modes, they operate in the middle of the bands between the CW and SSB groups. Operating has nothing to do with how well you can hear (which I like) but how well you can read print that approaches a doctor’s handwriting. The narrow bandwidth of HF operation means operating at a snail's pace of 45 baud which can make for minutes between QSOs. On top of all this, RTTY has a lot higher duty cycle than CW or SSB which has a much greater effect on the sensitivity of near-by stations.

It will be interesting to see how NARC addresses the new challenges put forward by the ARRL for Field Day 1998. Why not come out to the club meeting and the remaining Field Day planning meetings to see how Fletch plans to choreograph this year’s show? I’m sure of one thing, though: the folks in NARC will make this year’s Field Day a class act.

While the crew scrambles around before curtain call, why not do some final tuning of your own with these contests?

ANARTS Worldwide RTTY/Digital,13-14 June

Speak of the Devil! This contest is sponsored by the Australian National Amateur Radio Teleprinter Society (ANARTS) and lasts the full 48 hours. Operation is limited to 30 hours maximum for single operator stations while multi- operator stations are unrestricted. Contest exchange is RST, CQ Zone, and time in UTC. Multipliers are each DXCC country and each of the 8 VK call districts with each continent counting as a one-time multiplier. Scoring has a unique Aussie flavor to it; in addition to the usual tally of QSO points x multipliers x # of continents, each VK QSO is good for 100, 200, and 300 points on 20, 15, and 10 meters, respectively, and 400 points/40 meters and 500 points/80 meters. When you get all this added up, send it to VK2BQS by 1 Sep. 1998 for your entry.

All-Asian DX Contest, 20-21 June

This 48-hour contest covers 160 through 10 meters, CW and SSB on all bands except 160. Contest exchange consists of a signal report plus operator age (“00” for YLs). Available categories are Single Operator/single band, Single Operator/multiband, and Multi-multi. QSO points are awarded as 3/160-meter contact, 2/80-meter contact, and 1 point for contacts on each of the other bands. Contest multipliers are the number of different Asian prefixes worked on each band. Contest logs go to the Japanese Amateur Radio League (JARL) by 30 July for CW participants, 30 October for SSB. If the cycle continues to show promise, this should a pretty good weekend for those exotic Asian QTH's.

ARRL Field Day, 27-28 June

‘Nuff said.

73 and CU at show time! de K2TE