[CQ-Contest] 9A DX Contest Announcment

[Mirko 9A6KX]

We are very glad to announce 1st edition of the 9A DX contest, which
continues the tradition of 9A CW contest that was held for years on the
same weekend - the third full weekend of December, this year this is
16th-17th this month - it was time for the 9A CW to evolve to something
more up to date and now we got mixed-mode (cw/ssb) modern style contest.

Rules can be found here:
https://www.hamradio.hr/9a-dx-contest/

Invitation newsletter:
http://tinyurl.com/9A-DX-CONTEST

We are issuing awards for SOAB HP Mixed winner DX & 9A - three days stay
with hotel & meals included at Istra Contest Conference in October 2024.
and awards for top FIVE DX & 9A Youth overlay - new 4O3A headsets for top
score within mentioned overlays, and CT1ILT cw paddle keys for 2nd-5th
place - Had to mention the sponsors as they are most generous.

Software that supports this until this date:
- N1MM Logger+, DXLog.net, QARtest, WriteLog, UCXLog
- Still waiting for Win-Test update, hopefully they will manage to do it,
as they were away on FY for ARRL 10m, and before that there was a major
upgrade for CQWW CW and 9A DX was least concern to the authors

- Noticed some score miss-calculation in all for ex. DxLog not counting
both license plate and ITU multiplier for DX stations for first contact
with 9A/zone 28 but only counts license plate mult and similar in all
mentioned,
but it is really a little not so important detail now, log processing will
re-calculate all logs in the UBN adjudication process, and we are very
thankful to all authors for providing fast updates to their applications!

- Regarding SO 2 Bands category:
- It is not Cabrillo standard, so  competitors should select SOAB in N1MM
and work two(or more) bands. Upon upload to the robot they chose the
category SO2B and selected two bands they wanted to submit.
- Didn't really check so detailed other software for that, DXLog has
support for SO2B but still, you can operate on all 6 bands there is no
software limit so you choose your own bands, having in mind the rule saying
that for EU stations one of two bands must be 160, 80 or 40 M

- Also, VA2WA and CONTEST.RUN is adopted for 9A DX live score posting, keep
in mind it's still not tested especially the SO2B category may be the issue

- DXLog & N1MM have prefilled database of 9A multipliers (license plate
abbreviations) - use it carefully as some errors may be found inside
(really, not so different to MASTER.DTA file for cqww hi )
not sure if DXLog is needed to download and update that file manually, it
was so on my PC, so the file is located here:
http://dxlog.net/sw/files/download/database/9ADX_db.txt
(It needs to overwrite original file in C:\Program Files
(x86)\DXLog.net\Database)

Hopefully, we will meet on air this weekend, and all participants will have
good conditions and, what is most important - fun!

CU This weekend

P.S. - Please report all software (and other) issues to HF-9A at HAMRADIO.HR so
we can improve for next year! Don't be harsh on software bugs, all authors
& contributors are stars!

73 Mirko 9A6KX