[CQ-Contest] SS CW today

[David Kozinn, K2DBK]

I believe this is the same as last year, and the answer is that the
contest, as it always has still starts at 2100 GMT (or UTC, or Zulu)
today (Saturday) and ends at 0300Z Monday. I have a clock (well
actually, several, including the one that's on my radio's display) set
permanently to UTC time and I don't worry about "local start time" and
I never have to adjust the clocks.  The contest is still exactly the
same number of hours.

As a DXer and contester, I've found it very useful to be able to
"think" in UTC, especially since that's the convention for logs and
for QSL cards. So, depending on where you live, the time on the
non-UTC wall clock might say something different at the start of the
event and the end of the event than it did a few years ago, but the
start and end times in UTC are the same.

73,
     David, K2DBK
     k2dbk.com
     k2dbk.blogspot.com

P.S. Incidentally, I happen to agree with you that changing the start
& end dates for DST was not well-thought out at all. The cost to
Americans in terms of the changes that had to be made to accommodate
this easily outweighed any energy savings, because there weren't any;
Studies after the first round of "new" DST adjustments showed no
savings at all.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070403-the-daylight-savings-change-no-savings-no-point.html
 (I apologize for the off-topic rant).


On Sat, Nov 1, 2008 at 9:19 AM, James  Cain <jamesdavidcain at gmail.com> wrote:
> Remember way back, when everybody in the U.S. switched from Daylight Saving Time to Normal Time on Saturday night of the CQ WW SSB contest?
>
> Well, thanks to the geniuses in the U.S. Congress, who extended Daylight Saving Time by a week or so, SS CW starts at 5 p.m. Eastern Time (instead of 4 p.m.). I suppose it starts later in the Central, Mountain, and Pacific time zones, too.
>
> If I am wrong/confused about this, attribute it to my having grown up in Indiana, where time is relative to what county you live in.
>
> Does this mean that we can operate only 23 hours instead of 24? Or is it 25 hours? Do we get more sleep overnight?
>
> Does anybody really know what time it is?
>
> Maybe we should have an SS Practice between 2000Z and 2100Z. If we all send CW near the speed of light, will SS start later still?
>
> Jim Cain, K1TN
> Atlantic City NJ Time
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