Contesting
Contest schedule
January 13
•
4 States QRP Group Second Sunday Sprint
January 14
•
Classic Exchange, CW
January 15
•
QRP Fox Hunt
•
Phone Fray
•
CWops Mini-CWT Test
January 16
•
CWops Mini-CWT Test
•
NAQCC CW Sprint
January 17
•
NCCC RTTY Sprint
•
QRP Fox Hunt
•
NCCC Sprint
•
LZ Open Contest
January 18
•
Hungarian DX Contest
•
RSGB AFS Contest, SSB
•
North American QSO Party, SSB
•
NA Collegiate Championship, SSB
•
ARRL January VHF Contest
•
WAB 1.8 MHz Phone/CW
•
Feld Hell Sprint
January 19
•
Feld Hell Sprint
January 20
•
Run for the Bacon QRP Contest
January 22
•
SKCC Sprint
•
QRP Fox Hunt
•
Phone Fray
•
CWops Mini-CWT Test
DX Engineering's blog has a recent article by Ward, N0AX, entitled Station Improvements: Inside
During the Winter. Ergonomics and record keeping are front and center in his suggestions.
The January ARRL VHF Contest is the weekend of January 18, 2020. For FT8/FT4 operators, this is
another opportunity to participate in a contest! Don't forget that other modes can be used on the
same band. It can be an easy way to pick up additional points and grids.
Don't forget to cheer on those college and universities that compete in the North American
Collegiate Challenge while you're making contacts in the NAQP Phone Contest. If you don't see your
alma mater listed in the competitor pre-registration, you should encourage the radio club to sign up!
In 2020, you'll need 84 sections to get a clean sweep in the ARRL Sweepstakes! "The Radio Amateurs
of Canada announced a new section," so Prince Edward Island gets its own section starting on April
1. Also on April 1, some amateurs currently in the ONS section will find themselves in the GTA
section.
When entering one of the assisted classes in a contest, you'll probably be receiving spots from a
telnet cluster. Finding one that meets your needs for availability and reliability is a task to do before
a contest. Tim, N3QE, suggested a number of CC Cluster sites that "...are active and have
reversebeacon.net spots" in a recent message to the N1MM Logger+ group. The 46 (and counting)
message topic has a number of suggestions which may help you use spots more effectively in
various situations.
The 31st Annual Dayton Top Band Dinner will be Friday, May 15, 2020, and registrations are being
accepted on the website. While you're registering for that, check out the
ContestSuperSuite.com website, which has been updated for 2020.
KB6NU's recent blog entry describes LadderSnaps, a ladder line insulator that converts "home
center" 14 AWG THHN wire into feedline for your antennas. KB6NU also talks about some Anderson
Powerpole distribution blocks by K9JEB. Powerpole connectors are available in a wide variety of
sizes and colors - K9ZW's blog entry in December described the variations.
Inexpensive software defined radio hardware arguably started a few years ago with the availability
of DVB-T USB "dongles." These were devices that were originally designed to receive over the air
digital TV broadcasts using a PC as the decoder and display. But these devices had the ability to
receive arbitrary swaths of spectrum. The RTL-SDR project was born to tune the devices and grab
raw samples for other software to process. A Hackaday article by Tom Nardi describes how these
devices and RTL-SDR have evolved, and how an ecosystem of tools and software have grown around
them.
=ARRL Contest letter