[CQ-Contest] Announcing the FT4 Sprint contest to be held this Thursday evening local time in North America.

[Ed Radlo]

To all FT4 operators worldwide:

The Northern California Contest Club is again pleased to sponsorour weekly FT4 Sprint, aka FT4 NS (NCCC Sprint).  The Contest Manager, Dennis Egan W1UE, is inItaly where he will be a contestant in this weekend’s big WRTC event, so he askedme to make the FT4 Sprint announcement this week.
This contest is held every Friday UTC between 0100Z and 0130Z.  That's Thursday evening in North America.
Please read the rules carefully.  They are posted at the following location:

https://www.ncccsprint.com/ft4ns.html

 

NOTE THE SPECIAL RULE FOR THIS CONTEST:

One thing that makes this contest unique is the eliminationof excessive handshaking (e.g., R, RRR, RR 73, etc.) at the end of a contact.  A valid contact can be made after two ops exchangetheir callsigns, exchange their grid squares, and send a single “R”.  That’s it. All that can be done in just two transmissions.

This unique rule has been encoded into software by ourfriend Uwe DG2YCB in a special version of WSJT-X Improved.  To get this special FT4 Sprint software, goto:

https://sourceforge.net/projects/wsjt-x-improved/files/WSJT-X_v2.7.0/

and download the file that is labeled “FT4 NS (NCCC Sprints)”dated June 19, 2023.  33 of us havedownloaded this software so far.  Onereally neat thing about this software is that if you right-click on the “H”button in the lower left of the main WSJT-X screen, you will toggle between thespecial FT4 Sprint exchanges (comprising grid squares and the elimination of excessiveR’ing that I described above) and the standard FT4 exchanges (comprising signalreport in dB and lots of R’ing at the end of the QSO).  This toggling feature is helpful for workingpeople who aren’t in the contest, but whom we hope to lure into the contest in futureweeks.

 

FREQUENCIES. PLEASE READ CAREFULLY:

Many of you have expressed your thoughts as to whatfrequencies should be used for this contest. Many of you have very strong opinions on this.  The Contest Committee has considered all ofyour comments very carefully, and we are well aware of the issues.  Last week, we tried an experiment in which weasked people to use a special set of FT4 Sprint frequencies separate and apartfrom the standard FT4 frequencies.  Someops didn’t read W1UE’s announcement on this carefully, and, for other reasonsas well, the result was that last week some ops used the standard frequencies,some ops used the new frequencies, and some ops used both sets offrequencies.  For this week, your ContestCommittee is asking you to:

USE THE STANDARD FT4 FREQUENCIES, BUT ON 40 METERS  CHECKOUT 7.080 BECAUSE THE STANDARD FT4 FREQUENCY IS IN THE MIDDLE OF THE CW PORTIONOF THE BAND   

The standard FT4 frequencies are listed in the official rules,for which I have given you the link above.

The posted rules list “any” as the frequency(ies) for 160 meters,but for those of you who want to give 160 a whirl, try 1.836.

Good luck to all, and I hope to work you all this Thursday evening on multiple bands. 

73, Ed Radlo  AJ6V