Author: "Kenneth E. Harker" <kenharker@kenharker.com>
Date: Fri, 31 Jul 2009 07:45:30 -0700
Plus, a ten-minute rule, like a other manadtory off-time rule, adds elements of strategy that require excellent decision making to maximize score. A station has to be constantly asking itself if a ba
Author: "Kenneth E. Harker" <kenharker@kenharker.com>
Date: Fri, 7 Aug 2009 12:31:28 -0700
The ARRL recently published a nice profile of a contester on their ARRLWeb page and included it in the most recent ARRL Letter email newsletter. It's good publicity for the sport, and I think it's a
Author: "Kenneth E. Harker" <kenharker@kenharker.com>
Date: Fri, 7 Aug 2009 12:32:02 -0700
http://www.arrl.org/?artid=9114 "MFJ Acquires Cushcraft (Aug 7, 2009) -- On August 7, MFJ Enterprises announced they had purchased the Cushcraft Amateur Radio antennas product line from Missouri-base
Author: "Kenneth E. Harker" <kenharker@kenharker.com>
Date: Tue, 11 Aug 2009 15:58:42 -0700
The Central Texas DX and Contest Club (CTDXCC) hosted the second annual CW Pileup Competition at the Austin Summerfest amateur radio convention last weekend in Austin, Texas. The competition was base
Author: "Kenneth E. Harker" <kenharker@kenharker.com>
Date: Mon, 17 Aug 2009 08:37:22 -0700
Since we are dancing around the details... it seems to me that there are a few particular methods of cheating that could be difficult to detect even from log inspection: * Excessive power: Sort of ob
Author: "Kenneth E. Harker" <kenharker@kenharker.com>
Date: Thu, 22 Oct 2009 21:32:58 -0700
The CQ World Wide DX Contest (both Phone and CW) _does_ have a "Single Operator Assisted" category for those who use spotting assistance (via cluster, skimmer, web sites, etc.) The SOA category does
Author: "Kenneth E. Harker" <kenharker@kenharker.com>
Date: Mon, 26 Oct 2009 11:03:06 -0700
Almost every contest prohibits self-spotting by prohibiting you from using "non-Amateur" means of communication to solicit contacts. For ARRL contests, for example, this is written in General Rule 3.
Author: "Kenneth E. Harker" <kenharker@kenharker.com>
Date: Tue, 27 Oct 2009 08:50:43 -0700
If we allow self-spotting, it's a very short step to allowing stations to exchange information or confirm contacts via the spotting network (this seems to happen sometimes in the VHF+ weak signal wor
Author: "Kenneth E. Harker" <kenharker@kenharker.com>
Date: Tue, 3 Nov 2009 07:55:10 -0800
Really? Before spotting, nobody enjoyed contesting? When the micro-lite DXpedition guys chose to go with low power and vertical dipoles for their trips to the southern ocean islands, did that ruin th
Author: "Kenneth E. Harker" <kenharker@kenharker.com>
Date: Tue, 3 Nov 2009 17:14:10 -0800
Before the wide-spread interconnection of clusters, a packet spot on one cluster would not result in a packet pileup. The overall number of spots that any individual station would see was much more m
Author: "Kenneth E. Harker" <kenharker@kenharker.com>
Date: Thu, 5 Nov 2009 12:45:16 -0800
Some trivia in advance of the ARRL Sweepstakes this month... Probably everyone is familiar with the idea of deleted DXCC entities - countries that no longer exist but did at some point in the past du
Author: "Kenneth E. Harker" <kenharker@kenharker.com>
Date: Fri, 6 Nov 2009 08:10:31 -0800
Well - take the case of Washington (WA) in 1989. It was split into Eastern Washington (EWA) and Western Washington (WWA). For the purposes of contest awards and records, WA was "deleted" in the exact
Author: "Kenneth E. Harker" <kenharker@kenharker.com>
Date: Fri, 6 Nov 2009 08:24:26 -0800
The number of sections has changed over time. The first sweepstakes contests had 68 sections. In 1990, there were 77 sections. Today, there are 80 sections. The most recent changes were: 1 Jan 1996 N
Author: "Kenneth E. Harker" <kenharker@kenharker.com>
Date: Fri, 6 Nov 2009 15:33:04 -0800
The first ARRL All-Section Sweepstakes, the contest that today we know as the ARRL November Sweepstakes, took place in late January, 1930 (it was moved to November in 1932). I was curious to see what
Author: "Kenneth E. Harker" <kenharker@kenharker.com>
Date: Sun, 8 Nov 2009 08:31:52 -0800
ARRL sections are the basis of awards and records for many ARRL contests. In working on the records of the ARRL 10 meter and ARRL 160 meter contests, the question comes up about what to do with, for
Author: "Kenneth E. Harker" <kenharker@kenharker.com>
Date: Sun, 8 Nov 2009 08:42:50 -0800
You've made this assertion a couple of times now. In the case of Washington section, which of the new sections is considered the "original"? Here's the announcement of the split in the April, 1989 is
Author: "Kenneth E. Harker" <kenharker@kenharker.com>
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 2009 10:32:35 -0800
In working on the records for the ARRL 160 Meter Contest, I notice that several section records remain unclaimed: Single-operator QRP records are unclaimed in: Vermont Puerto Rico US Virgin Islands Q
Author: "Kenneth E. Harker" <kenharker@kenharker.com>
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 2009 18:44:56 -0800
Randy recently discussed this in depth in the CQ WPX blog: http://www.cqwpx.com/blog/?p=46 "The WPX Committee is carefully considering a change to the Multi-Single category rules for 2010. We believe
Author: "Kenneth E. Harker" <kenharker@kenharker.com>
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 2009 05:52:05 -0800
If that's a concern, then the simple answer for your situation is to operate your station as M/2. If you look at the top WPX scores, you'll see that one out of every 4 QSOs on average is a new multip