 April 28, 2021 Editor: Paul Bourque, N1SFE | |
IN THIS ISSUE
Coming up the weekend of May 1 are four events -- the New England, Delaware, Indiana, and 7th Area QSO Parties, where you can have just "one log to enter them all." The contest sponsors are cooperating to make it easy! Just make sure to send your log to all four QSO party sponsors. You can also submit it to the StateQSOParty.com website for the State QSO Party Challenge. If you're into FTx modes, you can try the Delaware QSO Party, where you'll be using Field Day mode for the FTx software to send the exchange, cleverly exchanging the Delaware county designation using 1A, 2A, or 3A. See more information about this below. For other than those 4QP activities, try the ARI International DX Contest for CW, SSB, and RTTY contacts. The weekend of May 8, DX opportunities will be in the CQ-M International Contest and the Volta WW RTTY. There's a "Single Op 6H" category in the Volta contest for operators that want to operate just 6 hours. Those 6 hours can be spread over the contest weekend, and any off times must be greater than 60 minutes. Entrants can go longer, but only the first 6 operating hours are scored -- any contacts made afterward don't count for score.
Complete information for all contests follows the Conversation section 29 Apr - 12 May 2021 April 29 April 30 May 1
May 2 May 3 May 4 May 5
May 6 May 7 May 8
May 9 May 10
May 11 May 12 NEWS, PRESS RELEASES, AND GENERAL INTEREST "North American QSO Parties to Recognize Young Contester Entries" To encourage young operators in radiosport, the National Contest Journal (NCJ) will recognize their entries in the NAQP contests beginning with the North American QSO Party (NAQP) CW and SSB contests in August 2021. Following the lead of Youth on the Air (YOTA) in Region 1 (ham-yota.com) scores from YOTA-qualified operators 25 years old and younger will be highlighted in the results. A "YOTA operator" check box will be added by 3830scores.com and on the NAQP log upload app. Initially, the YOTA operator designation will only apply to single-operator entries. This is not a separate category - all of the scores will compete for awards in the regular single-op category. 3830scores.com will display the YOTA-operator scores in an overlay to the single-operator group. NAQP line scores will note the YOTA operator scores and a separate table of these scores will be included in the results and referenced in the NCJ "NextGen" column by WB9VPG. "Clear Frequencies Requested for Net Providing 24/7 Coverage of St. Vincent Volcanic Eruption" The Caribbean Emergency and Weather Net (CEWN) uses 3.815 MHz LSB and 7.188 MHz LSB. "CEWN is requesting that radio amateurs not involved in the volcano response to keep these frequencies clear." The upcoming weekend of May 1-2 is an opportunity to simultaneously enter the New England QSO Party, Delaware QSO Party, Indiana QSO Party, and the 7QP (Seventh Area QSO Party). The sponsors of these events have cooperated so that the same log can be submitted to each event, with each event scoring only the relevant contacts. The N1MM Logger+ team has made it super easy for operators to participate in all four contests with just one log. From the N1MM Logger+ documentation: "Four QSO parties (the 7QP [7th Call Area QSO Party], Indiana QSO Party, Delaware QSO Party, and New England QSO Party) that are all on the same weekend have agreed to coordinate such that all four can be logged in a single contest log. The program software allows users to log stations active in all four QSO parties and automatically determines the state multiplier from the received exchange (other contest county exchange). Log the exact exchange that is received, and after the contests are over send the same Cabrillo output file to all four contest sponsors. If you are an 'in-state' user of one of these QSO parties, select the appropriate state party option in the QSO party contest selector (7QP, IN, NEWE or DE). If you are 'out-of-state' for all four contests this weekend, select the IN7QPNE option in the dropdown state selector. The instructions are the same: log the exchange that you receive and send the same Cabrillo file without editing to all four sponsors. All sponsors re-calculate the score of all submissions." There is additional information on how to make logging stations on county lines easy - see the N1MM Documentation for the IN7QPNE contest. If you're on the FTx modes this weekend you might copy people calling "CQ FD." Those stations could be time travelers from a future June, but are more likely participating in the Delaware QSO Party. The current version of WSJT-X software can't accommodate most QSO party exchanges, so the Delaware QSO Party sponsors are encoding the three Delaware counties in the Field Day exchange for their event! DE QP Participants should be in "Field Day" contest mode, and use the following exchanges: 1A DE for New Castle County, 2A DE for Kent County, and 3A DE for Sussex County. Outside-of-Delaware stations, use 1A and their ARRL/RAC Section, or DX, for example, 1A WA. Suggested frequencies for Delaware QSO Party FTx contacts are 4 kHz above the normal FTx frequencies. FTx-mode contacts must be submitted in a separate file from other-mode contacts - as always, see the rules for all the details. Don't forget to also submit your QSO party logs to StateQSOParty.com for the State QSO Party Challenge. The StateQSOParty.com website contains an tool to show your separate scores for the New England, Delaware, Indiana, and 7th area QSO parties. Those scores are unofficial and for your own use, because the contest sponsors will calculate your official score from the logs you submit to them. Registration is now open for this year's International DX Conference, sponsored by the Northern California DX Club (NCDXF). This year's event is on May 15 and 16, 2021, and is virtual via Zoom. The preliminary schedule consists of eight presentations each day, including a Contest Forum on Saturday chaired by Bob, N6TV. Next year in Visalia! May 20 through 22, plan for the virtual Hamvention weekend, kicking off with Contest University on Thursday, May 20. Registration is required, and free. On Friday, May 21, Hamvention forums include Special Achievement presentations, Ham of the Year, and Amateur of the Year presentations. Saturday, May 22 is the 12-hour Hamvention QSO Party on 80 through 10 meters. Exchange is signal report, and the first year that you attended Hamvention (or 2021). The WRTC 2022 Association Assembly met on April 23, and decided to postpone WRTC 2022 to 2023, in light of the continuing COVID pandemic. According to the announcement, no other changes are going to be made in the "or to the overall structure of the event and its sponsoring committee." Just a reminder: ARRL Field Day is June 26-27, 2021. Field Day rule waivers that were in place in 2020 are carried over to 2021, and class D and E now have a limit of 150 W PEP output. "Updated Radio Frequency Exposure Rules Become Effective on May 3." The limits didn't change, but they now apply to all services, including amateur radio. "After May 3 of this year, any new station, or any existing station modified in a way that's likely to change its Radio Frequency Exposure profile -- such as different antenna or placement or greater power -- will need to conduct an evaluation by the date of activation or change." Bob, N6TV, has updated his presentation "Everything You Need To Know About USB and Serial Interfaces" for 2021. His presentation includes the history and evolution of serial ports, chipsets to prefer and those to avoid, how to use software tools to troubleshoot issues you might encounter, and how to best utilize the built-in USB to serial functionality that has been built into some modern rigs to support CAT, CW keying, and RTTY keying. Green Heron Engineering's Sub Lunar/Green Heron EME Az/El System can handle vertical loads of over 6,000 pounds. This is for "medium duty" satellite work, or for EME arrays. (K9CT via Zoom) Don Banta, K5DB, has been shepherding the Arkansas QSO Party for nearly 20 years. Now, he's handed the baton to the Noise Blankers Radio Group. Don will still be involved, so look for him in the ARQP as a rover. (Kevin, K5KVN) Operators reflect microwave signals off of the darndest things! Like the moon! Storms via Rainscatter.com. Then there's the use of various flight tracking apps to bounce signals off of airplanes. And now...cruise ships!? Yes. Cruise ships. On 1296 MHz. EA8CSB and EA8CXN used a cruise ship approximately 60 km away from both of their locations to complete contacts using FT8 and SSB, saying, "It should be noted that the Doppler effect is negligible, since the relative navigation speed of the ships is very low." DIN Coaxial Connectors In the US, we're most familiar with "UHF" type connectors such as PL-259 and SO-239. Other types we'd commonly come across include BNC and N connectors. In cellular network equipment, 7-16 DIN Connectors are commonly used, and they're now finding their way into amateur applications. They have a 50 ohm characteristic impedance. Steve, VE6WZ, has posted a new video of how to use noise cancelers like the MFJ 1026, and the NCC-1 to reduce local noise. Tim, K3LR, also suggests the video by KB8O showing the newer NCC-2's capabilities. (via RFI Reflector). Tim, K3LR, covered Ferrites, Ground Planes, and Coax Isolation in a recent "Weekend Special" on YouTube. Mike Arasim, Product Manager for Power and Inductive Applications at Fair-Rite Products, shows how one might identify some unknown magnetic cores in this YouTube video. The video also links to this web page on how to determine material type. Nathaniel Frissell, W2NAF, talks about HamSCI and a space weather sensing network comprised of crowdsourced "Personal Space Weather Stations" in this YouTube video. Nathaniel talks about Traveling Ionospheric Disturbances (TIDs), and how they may be correlated to other physical phenomena. The results of the 2020 New England QSO Party are available! Tom, K1KI, sent this out earlier in April: "Results from the 2020 New England QSO Party were posted on the website a few days ago. We received 1101 logs in 2020 and sure appreciate your participation! You can view the main results article, with a breakout of non-W1 scores, and W1 scores. Soapbox comments are here." Participants making more than 25 complete QSOs and who submitted a log have been emailed a high-resolution PDF file with a certificate. "Congratulations to the 40 stations or groups who earned one of the plaques - they will be sent out soon. Special thanks to the plaque sponsors! The 2021 NEQP takes place on May 1-2 -- please join us again for a lot of fun!" Matt, W1PY, was one of the fortunate ones to earn a NEQP Plaque, and thanked the contest and plaque sponsors on Facebook. Ian, G0FCT, reports that the results of the 2021 BARTG HF RTTY Contest are now available. Next year's event will take place 0200z March 19, 2022 to 0159z March 21, 2022. To Zero Beat or Not To Zero Beat This operating tip was inspired by Lee, K1LEE. When calling a station that is CQing on a crowded band, you might use different strategies depending on whether anyone else is also calling that station. If you're competing with other callers in any kind of pileup, you want your signal to stand out just a little - try calling a few Hz off the CQing station's frequency. If you're calling in the clear, if at first you don't succeed, try zero-beating their frequency and call again. "In a crowded band, filters are often set to be very narrow, so an off-frequency CW signal won't be heard." Many of today's rigs have an auto-zero-beat function and it pays to know how to use it. Seasoned CQers know that they should keep their filters opened to hear those slightly off-frequency stations calling, and most keep their RIT on all the time to tune off-frequency stations as necessary. Some ops use a "Clear RIT" command embedded in their "CQ" (N1MM Logger+'s F1) or "ThankYou" (N1MM Logger+'s F3) macros to reset for the next contact. Some ops will also go further and include a "reset the filter bandwidth to a wide setting" command into the same macros, in case they switched to a narrower filter during a contact. Hans, DJ7BA, has published a stereo WAV file generated from Audacity that has one channel with a "mix of two sine waves of equal amplitude of 975 Hz and 1025 Hz" while the other channel is a "square wave providing frequency difference of the tones for triggering." Feed the tones channel into a radio, and the square-wave channel into a scope, and you can easily perform PEP measurements. (Ward, N0AX) Luigi, PY2SPY, is working on a browser-based SDR console. He's been able to stream data from an Airspy R2. It could provide another alternative for those using transceivers that supply spectrum information to be able to see this information even when operated remotely. Mumble is a "free, open source, low latency, high quality voice chat application." Thousands of gamers are using it any moment in time. The quality of the audio is very good, and supports not only multiple channels of audio, but placement of audio sources in a sound field. It's surprising that it hasn't been incorporated into more ham radio projects that have a need to move audio around. Here's a YouTube video from nearly 2years ago, of SDR audio being sent via Mumble. Virtual Audio Cable is "is an audio bridge between applications that transmits sounds (audio streams) from app to app, from device to device." The application is useful when audio from one application or device on your computer needs to be routed through another. Amateur radio and SDR applications are even mentioned by name on the software's website. Some applications even embed a version in their software. The May 2021 issue of QST has two articles and a Technical Correspondence item from that you should be aware of: Stan's, W0SJ, article, "Scavenger Time-Domain Reflectometer Coaxial Cable Tester" could be a nice weekend project, and very useful for checking out your station's antennas. Many of today's digital oscilloscopes can provide a screen capture, so you can save the traces in your station notebook to compare over time. Guenther's, DK6ET, article "High Efficiency 2 kW Water-Cooled Dummy Load" should appeal to those that need to test their high-power stations without emitting a signal over the air. If the milling requirements are too much, there are occasionally water-cooled "cold plates" available as surplus from eBay and other sources, which could be tapped and threaded. Try "heat sink cold plate" and variations as search terms. Lyman, K9LZJ/W9VW, suggests a method to "Build an Affordable Coax Relay" in the Technical Correspondence column on page 52. There are plenty of 24 to 26.5 volt vacuum relays available as surplus, and adding an inexpensive boost converter module readily available from sources like Amazon can get them to operate on more avaible 5 or 12 volt sources. One thing to check is that the boost converter module doesn't radiate any switching noise. The first-ever QRPARCI "Virtual FDIM" (Four Days In May) will be held on May 22, the traditional weekend of the Hamvention. This QRP convention typically consists of interactive presentations by other enthusiasts and vendors, along with building activities and social events. This year's virtual event includes day and evening lectures, plus a PDF of the proceedings, and according to the sponsors "registrants will be eligible to win fabulous and certainly valuable door prizes, like always!." Registration is $10 and closes May 15. The speaker lineup is already posted on the QRPARC.org website. When a Project Turns Into a Journey Sometimes, small projects turn out to be bigger than they seem at inception. One person's "mission creep" is another person's journey. I've been working on a tuning knob to be able to use with some PC-based SDR applications, and in conjunction with a laptop to access my remote station. It's always nice to tune with a knob. It was supposed to be a small project. I started this spare-time project a few weeks ago with an inexpensive "Blue Pill" STM32 CPU module, some switches, a mechanical rotary encoder module from Amazon, some "Dupont" jumpers, some LEDs, resistors, and other small parts. After getting a basic circuit wired up, I turned to getting the free software development environment from STMicroelectronics configured. Then there was the choice of programming libraries and framework to use - stick with the manufacturer provided libraries, or use an open-source ARM framework. This project is going to communicate knob movement to a PC over USB, and there are some definite tradeoffs between what ST provides and what the open source framework provides. I built a small USB project device in both frameworks, and then started to experiment to see which was "better." It turns out that "better now" vs. "better later" may be two different things. The manufacturer-provided framework would be great for a single USB connected tuning knob device that worked with an SDR program, but if I wanted one physical USB device to have more than one function, for example, tuning knob and a footswitch input, the open-source framework was better. Along the way I also learned of other radio projects like the McHF QRP Transceiver project that use a processor from the STM32 family, and have this composite functionality. It's just software, right? I'd just make sure that my hardware could support either framework. I was able to get the basic hardware and software working easily enough, but proto-board construction is not robust enough to use during a contest. The next step was to "capture" my schematic and lay out a printed circuit board, and then get it boxed up. The schematic capture and printed circuit board layout software I'd used for past projects changed owners and business models about 5 years ago. Each time I started the package, I'd get nagged to upgrade. The full version I have was a little long in the tooth, and it was time to look at an alternative. I "tuned in" to a really great YouTube series sponsored by Digi-Key on "An Introduction KiCad." KiCad is an open-source schematic capture / PCB layout package that seems to be well supported in the hobbyist community. Playing the tutorial videos at 2x speed, I leveraged my previous PCB experience to better understand what I needed to do to get the project done with KiCad. I haven't finished getting the schematic into KiCad yet, that will be sometime this week. That's the "journey" so far. I could have purchased one of the many fine PC-connected tuning knobs that are available right now. But I'd like to think (read: rationalize) that I've also laid a foundation for future projects, and have "leveled up" in my personal capabilities. I take inspiration from the scope and quality of the projects like those that Paul, W9AC, has on his QRZ.com page, also noting that he uses Front Panel Express for many of his projects. That's something I'm going to have to look into, before I finalize the PC Board... That's all for this time. Remember to send contesting related stories, book reviews, tips, techniques, press releases, errata, schematics, club information, pictures, stories, blog links, and predictions to contest-update@arrl.org 73, Brian N9ADG 29 Apr - 12 May 2021 An expanded, downloadable version of QST's Contest Corral is available as a PDF. Check the sponsors' website for information on operating time restrictions and other instructions. HF CONTESTS CWops Mini-CWT Test, Apr 29, 0300z to Apr 29, 0400z; CW; Bands: 160, 80, 40, 20, 15, 10m; Member: Name + Member No./"CWA", non-Member: Name + (state/province/country); Logs due: May 1. VHF+ CONTESTS Araucaria World Wide VHF Contest, May 1, 0000z to May 2, 1600z; CW, SSB, FM; Bands: 6, 2m; RS(T) + 6-character grid square; Logs due: May 7. VHF-UHF FT8 Activity Contest, May 5, 1700z to May 5, 2000z; FT8; Bands: (see rules) ; 4-character grid square; Logs due: May 10. SARL VHF/UHF Digital Contest, May 8, 0500z to May 8, 0700z (6m) and, May 8, 0700z to May 8, 0900z (2m) and, May 8, 0900z to May 8, 1100z (70cm) and, May 9, 0500z to May 9, 0700z (6m) and, May 9, 0700z to May 9, 0900z (2m) and, May 9, 0900z to May 9, 1100z (70cm); Digital; Bands: 50 MHz, 70 MHz, 144 MHz, 432 MHz, 1296 MHz; RST + 6-character grid locator; Logs due: May 16. 50 MHz Spring Sprint, May 8, 2300z to May 9, 0300z; not specified; Bands: 6m Only; 4-character grid square; Logs due: May 22. Also, see Worldwide Sideband Activity Contest, SKCC Sprint Europe, SKCC Weekend Sprintathon, Arkansas QSO Party, above. 29 Apr - 12 May 2021 April 29, 2021 April 30, 2021
May 1, 2021 May 2, 2021 May 3, 2021 May 4, 2021 May 5, 2021 May 6, 2021 May 7, 2021 May 8, 2021 May 9, 2021 May 10, 2021 May 11, 2021 May 12, 2021 ARRL Information Click here to advertise in this newsletter, space subject to availability. Your One-Stop Resource for Amateur Radio News and Information ARRL membership includes a choice of one print magazine: QST, the monthly membership journal, or On the Air, ARRL's new bimonthly publication for beginner and intermediate hams. All ARRL members can access all four ARRL magazines -- QST, On the Air, NCJ, and QEX - digitally. Subscribe to NCJ - the National Contest Journal. Published bimonthly, features articles by top contesters, letters, hints, statistics, scores, NA Sprint and QSO Parties. Subscribe to QEX - A Forum for Communications Experimenters. Published bimonthly, features technical articles, construction projects, columns and other items of interest to radio amateurs and communications professionals. Free of charge to ARRL members: Subscribe to The ARRL Letter (weekly digest of news and information), the ARES E-Letter (monthly public service and emergency communications news), Division and Section news -- and much more! ARRL offers a wide array of products to enhance your enjoyment of Amateur Radio. Visit the site often for new publications, specials and sales. Donate to the fund of your choice -- support programs not funded by member dues! Reprint permission can be obtained by sending email to permission@arrl.org with a description of the material and the reprint publication. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ARRL Contest Update wishes to acknowledge information from WA7BNM's Contest Calendar. | |
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Big props to the
