Contesting

The DELARA Contest team

To: ARRL Contest Clubs Follows are a few updates for contest clubs: The 2019 January VHF Contest just ended: With the January VHF Contest weekend now just behind us, the 10-day log submission deadline is 2359 UTC January 31st. You can upload your Cabrillo log to https://contest-log-submission.arrl.org/ (or we still accept paper logs -- and for the past several years we have been graced with the voluntary efforts of K9JK who transcribes and keyboards these VHF Contest paper logs and submits them in Cabrillo format for us {see http://www.arrl.org/january-vhf for paper logs submission – be sure to thank “JK” for these efforts when you see him at the various events or work him on the air!}). Email me with any questions regarding logs submission. If you have not yet sent in your log, please do so! Once you submit your electronic log, your call sign and basic detail will be listed at http://contests.arrl.org/logsreceived.php (after the logs deadline has passed, claimed scores and entry category will also be shown) Despite the bad weather in many parts of the country this past weekend, a log with even a few QSOs helps us measure the activity of the event. The February and March ARRL DX Contest weekends loom: The February 2019 ARRL DX CW Contest weekend (see rules at http://www.arrl.org/arrl-dx) is just a few weeks away - February 16-17, 2019; and the March 2019 ARRL DX Phone weekend is two weeks later - March 2-3, 2019. Are you ready? If you are part of a Club Competition effort, be sure your Club Membership Eligibility List is up to date (eg, are your new members added, members that moved away deleted, and members with call sign changes updated?) To manage your Membership Eligibility List: go to http://contest-clubs.arrl.org/ (remember to upload a full Membership Eligibility List each time you do an update, and that each line in your list contain the CALLSIGN,GRID for each member {that’s their 6- digit-grid locators}). Your list MUST BE updated BEFORE the event you will participate in (even if you do your update just moments/minutes before the event starts). And if you do have a Membership Eligibility List on file (see http://contest- clubs.arrl.org/viewlists.php for a list of clubs that are eligible because they uploaded their eligibility list), for your club to be in the competition, logs from at least 3 eligible members must be submitted for a given event. National Contest Journal (NCJ) - CW Sprint - Register Your Teams: While NA Sprint (http://ncjweb.com/north-american-sprint) regulars know about teams, those just getting into contesting may not yet appreciate the fun of team membership. This is also a great way for contest clubs to recruit, train, and retain members. Registering teams is easy - go to http://ncjweb.com/cwsprintteamreg/ and fill out the form. Teams can be registered and re-arranged right up until contest time. (The registration form will be available starting Saturday evening, 7 days before the contest.) That's it - no additional work is required on the part of your members and it’s all automatic from there. Once on a team, a participant is more likely to stick with it and put in a good effort. It's wonderful training for other CW contests, too - like the upcoming ARRL DX CW. You only have to have five members for a complete team and partial teams are fine. It helps for your team wrangler to collect calls and post the teams to your club's web, email, or social media. This encourages more to sign up and fill out more teams - like an auction, "I've got three members, three members, who's a fourth, I've got four members, and five, there's a team! Who's up for another team, give me a call sign..." Sprint teams are fun and help new members feel like part of the group, too. Hope to see lots of teams registered for the first Saturday night in February! As always, you are invited to provide any thoughts/suggestions/follow up to NCJ Editor Scott Wright, K0MD at drscott.wright@gmail.com Until next time…73, and see you in the contests! Bart Jahnke, W9JJ