[CQ-Contest] ARRL DX, Canadian multipliers

[Kelly Taylor]

Hi all,

Greetings to all global competitors in ARRL DX. Nice to work all of you. And nice to have sunspots and a forgiving auroral cap to be ABLE to work all of you!

One thing that became apparent in many QSOs this weekend, though, is that some of you may be under the impression that Canadian prefixes don't indicate geography. This is not true. Unlike the U.S., we must still identify if we are outside of our home call area. So if you know VE4 is Manitoba, and work a VE4 with no portable suffix, he's in Manitoba.

A complete listing of Canadian prefixes and their respective provinces is at http://www.rac.ca/regulatory/precan.htm

A complete listing of ARRL multipliers used in ARRL DX is at
http://www.arrl.org/contests/rules/2006/intldx.html

Some may argue that makes Canadian QSOs easier to deduce in heavy QRM, but that's an argument to take up with ARRL. (The contest rules only stipulate a portable designation when your location is a different DXCC entity than your home call area (KH6XZY/W6, for example). FCC regs stopped requiring an N1 in W6 to sign /W6 long ago.)

73, kelly
ve4xt

Canada - where prefixes still mean something.