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Nashua Area Radio Society activities. Included is Field Day, our Annual Picnic, Tech Nights, On The Air Activations and much more.

Activities, DX, Featured, General, Newsletter, On The Air

CQ WW and November Contesting Notes

CQ Zone map used for CQ World Wide contests

The last full weekend of October kicks off the contesting year for amateur radio. The big one is the CQ WW SSB contest sponsored by CQ Magazine.  I’ll cover some basics for this contest along with some strategy and etiquette, and give a preview of what to plan for in November.

CQ WW SSB Contest (00:00Z October 27 to 24:00 October 28)

The CQ WW SSB and CW contests are two of the biggest contests of the year. SSB is always held the last full weekend in October. The CW version of the contest is held a month later (often colliding with the Thanksgiving weekend). Last year over 8600 logs were submitted for the phone contest. That is a target rich environment if you are contesting, or just in the event to get QSOs for chasing awards.

The exchange for the contest is pretty simple: a signal report (always 59) and your CQ Zone (see the map at the top of this post). We’re in zone 5. The Caribbean is in zone 8. Europe is mostly in zones 14 and 15. We hear a lot of Brazil in these contests, too, so expect to hear from zone 11, also.

Guide to the CQ Worldwide DX Contest

With many thousands of hams on the bands, things can get crowded. Here’s what you need to know. The big stations with stacked Yagi arrays, full legal limit (or beyond, as is often alleged), and multiple operators will camp out on frequencies low in the band. They will be loud, and they’ll sit on those frequencies for the whole contest. Unless you’ve got a station like I’ve described (and a small army of volunteers to operate) you can’t compete with that. You can only work them. Remember our two operating styles described in an earlier post? You’ll almost certainly be using search-and-pounce (S&P) to get your QSOs.

Take a moment and look over how the points and multipliers work for this contest. (That’s good advice for any contest!) Points go like this:

  • Contacts between stations on different continents count three (3) points.
  • Contacts between stations on the same continent but in different countries count one (1) point. Exception: Contacts between stations in different countries within the North American boundaries count two (2) points.
  • Contacts between stations in the same country have zero (0) QSO point value, but are permitted for zone or country multiplier credit.

That last bullet point is important. Signals from within the United States will often be the strongest, especially here at the bottom of the solar cycle, but they are worth zero points. As you might imagine, calling a station and asking for a QSO when you offer no points is a tough sell. Don’t call US stations in this contest.

Multipliers are zones and countries (each band counts separately). So, variety is the spice of life — and the secret for success in CQ WW. Try to work as many countries as you can and the zones will almost always take care of themselves.

Here’s my one exception to the “don’t call US stations” guidance above: at the end of a contest, in those last few hours Sunday afternoon, if I’m missing a zone 3, 4, or 5 on a given band, and if I find a US station in that zone, I’ll call them for a “zero pointer” and be sure to say “thanks for the mult.” I only do it if the other station is lonely (has called CQ for a while with no takers). It is a little unsavory, but missing a multiplier that you can hear is awful. In general, you should be able to work Canadian stations for these mults. I call a US station only if all else has failed.

My final suggestion is this: keep calls simple, and the exchange short. You call them, they give you their exchange, and you say only “595”. That’s it. No chit-chat! There are very serious competitors in these contests and every second counts. Be respectful of other people’s time.

November Contests

November is the first full month of the contesting season and there are a couple of good ones on the docket. They are:

Sweepstakes is fun, but it has the most tedious exchange of any of big contests. The exchange is:

  • Serial number (starts with 1 and increments with each QSO)
  • Precedence (Q/A/B/U/M/S)
    • Q = Single Operator, QRP
    • A = Single Operator low power (< 150 Watts)
    • B = Single Operator high power
    • U = Single Operator “unlimited” (can use assistance)
    • M = Multi-operator station
    • S = School
  • Your call (yes, the call is part of the exchange so say it)
  • The last two digits of the year you were licensed
  • Your ARRL/RAC section

I typically take an index card and write out everything above (except the serial number) and tape it to the top of the computer monitor. That way I don’t need to think. All I need to do is read. So, my card has:

___serial___ A NE1RD 02 NH

As with any contest, I’ll suggest to anybody new to listen, listen, listen! Listen to how the exchange sounds. Get a feeling for the rhythm of the QSOs. Once you’ve got it, do a little S&P and get some points.

QSO Parties and other contests

Typically QSO parties run during months without big contests, so there aren’t any in November. But, there are some other international contests that might be fun including:

  • Ukrainian DX Contest (November 3-4)
  • 10-10 International Fall Contest digital (November 10-11)
  • OK/OM DX Contest, CW (November 10-11)
  • LZ DX Contest (November 17-18)
  • ARRL 160-Meter Contest

For details on these contests, or a complete listing of contests for November (or anytime) see the contestcalendar.com website.

Good Luck

Contesting is a great way to have some fun on the air. You’ll have plenty of people to talk to, and you know the conversation won’t drag! I used many of those contests early in my time as a ham working toward awards like DXCC. You don’t even have to submit your log to the contest sponsor if you don’t want to. Just get on and have fun. Good luck and 73 de NE1RD.

Activities, Featured, General, Newsletter, On The Air

October Contests

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WRTC 2002 Champions, Helsinki, Finland

Contesting Season is Here!

There is nothing in amateur radio as invigorating as contesting. October marks the official beginning of the new season and I hope this brief article will help you prepare.

If you are interested in a whole year’s worth of contest scheduling you can go to contestcalendar.com to see events happening in the next week or the next year. This month, though, one of the biggest contests of the year is held: CQ WW SSB. This was the first contest I entered just after being licensed in 2002. Though I was worried I would make a fool of myself, I found that contesting is fun and easy.

One of the biggest contests of the year

The dates for CQ WW are as follows:

  • SSB: October 27-28, 2018
  • CW: November 24-25, 2018

The exchange in this contest is a signal report (always 59) and your CQ zone. Our zone here in the Northeast is 5.

Working in this contest almost effortless. Here’s a sample exchange (assuming I’m the one you’d like to call):

  • YOU: Listen listen listen. Tune around. Find a station you’ve not worked. Listen for his call sign, and for the number they give in the exchange.
  • THEM: CQ contest November Echo One Romeo Delta
  • YOU: Alpha Bravo One Oscar Charlie
  • THEM: AB1OC 595
  • YOU: Roger 595
  • THEM: QRZ?

Using the stuff we learned in the last two posts, enter the information in your logging program so that their call sign and CQ zone, along with your own exchange information (5)  is recorded properly. If you have rig control set up so the radio talks to your logging computer and the clock is set to the correct time and date, recording the exchange information is all that’s left. You have a successful contact!

With almost no HF experience all those years ago I was still able to make nearly 300 contacts in an afternoon. Conditions are not nearly so good as they were in 2002, but you should still be able to have some fun.

Club Competition

We will have another club competition for this contest. Enter the contest, make lots of contacts, submit your score to the 3830 scores website, and then email me at programs – at – n1fd -dot- org to tell me what club category you’ve selected.

All categories are single operator except Superstation. The club does not differentiate between assisted and unassisted operation. Here are the categories:

  • QRP ~ 5 Watts or less, any antenna(s)
  • Small station ~  Wires or verticals, no gain antennas, <= 100 Watts)
  • Triband-Wires ~ One antenna with gain, still <= 100 Watts)
  • Superstation ~ Unlimited operators and equipment

Also This Month

There are QSO parties and other contests throughout the month. Here are a few of interest (see contest rules for exact time and dates):

  • Starting October 6
  • Starting October 13
  • Starting October 15
  • Starting October 20
  • Starting October 21
    • Illinois QSO Party Exchange: [them] RS(T) + county | [us] RS(T) + state

Clawing your way through your Worked All States award but don’t have South Dakota? This is your month! QSO parties are a great way to get those rare states. Don’t miss out!

Closing

I’ll try to give a list of on-air activities like this once a month. This is also where I’ll announce winners from the previous month’s club competition.

Remember: read the rules, prepare your station, and submit your log. Oh, and HAVE FUN!

Photo credit of the WRTC 2002 Champions R. A. Wilson, N6TV (Creative Commons CC BY 2.5)

Activities, Education and Training, General, Newsletter

Doing my Hobby at Work

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Back in December 2017, I was awkwardly stuffing my face with food at my group’s annual Christmas party. In the middle of munching some seriously tasty treat, one of my bosses approached to me and says he heard I was a ham. I nodded my head (b/c verbally acknowledging his comment would have caused food to spew out) and he subsequently asked if I would be interested in organizing an Intro to Amateur Radio Course via the Technical Education Committee at my place of work (MIT Lincoln Laboratory). I felt the need to clarify. I said something to the effect of: “So wait, you’re going to pay me to essentially do my hobby at work?” He nodded and told me to take some time to think about it. Yeh…so…didn’t need a whole lot of time.

First order of business: What am I going to make this course about? I tried to do my HW and research what are the essential topics to cover. I decided I would do a 10-week course: 5 weeks to technical topics, and 5 weeks for applications of the hobby. You can see in the image below what I decided on. That’s a relatively concrete outline:MIT LL Amateur Radio Course Outline

Secondly: who’s going to help me out? I pinged a generic bulletin board at work asking for volunteers to be lecturers and demo preppers for various topics. The response I received back was phenomenal. Numerous folks (order 30 people or so) offered to help out. After attrition, and various folks realizing this was a serious time commitment, the list whittled down to around 10 or so. I was still happy. Additionally, I was even able to recruit our very own Burns Fischer to participate and do an AMSAT lecture! (Thanks, Burns)

Thirdly: how to keep the lecturers honest and encourage them to follow through. I borrowed a strategy that my colleague used for his digital communications course at work. You have a slide deck laydown 1 month out (that means the speakers come prepared with printed out copies of their slides and they lay them out on a table and we go through them for 1.5-2 hours) and enforce a dry-run 2 weeks out from their dedicated class time. Because this was all volunteer work, I couldn’t rip apart people’s slides too much, so the deadlines were more to stay on top of folks and gently remind them of their obligation.

The admin aspect of the job threw me for a loop. I didn’t expect to have to get so down in the weeds. From security issues to generic scheduling of dates, it was slow-going. Especially in the summertime.

But the reward of doing it all — oh the reward. After some pretty effortless advertising on my part, I was told by HR that we had 60 people enrolled in the course with a solid waitlist; this was the most popular course in the Fall. My. Mind. Was. Blown. I mean it was and it wasn’t. I work at a place with a ton of engineers who love RF as much as their children. But at the same time, I didn’t expect so many young people want to learn what this hobby was all about. I’m glad they signed up.

Our kickoff class was September 12. Myself and my co-organizer spoke to a packed room plus full of interested people. I remain in awe of the interest level of the students and feel fortunate to be a part of this entire ordeal. Maybe this is the beginning of something lasting. The hard part is determining what are the next steps once the class has concluded.

Thanks for reading,

Brian AB1ZO

Radio Amateurs Developing Skills Worldwide