Southern California Contest Club
NA Sprint CW: September 9 NA Sprint RTTY: September 16 CQ WW DX RTTY: September 29-30
NA Sprint CW: September 9 NA Sprint RTTY: September 16 CQ WW DX RTTY: September 29-30
Officers
President: Dick Norton, N6AA n6aa[at]arrl[dot]net
Secretary, Treasurer, Membership: Bruce Horn, WA7BNM bhorn[at]hornucopia[dot]com
Webmaster: Dennis Younker NE6I ne6i[@]cox[dot]net
Secretary, Treasurer, Membership: Bruce Horn, WA7BNM bhorn[at]hornucopia[dot]com
Webmaster: Dennis Younker NE6I ne6i[@]cox[dot]net
Members E-Mail Reflector
Information on how to subscribe to the reflector is available at http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/sccc/
To post a message to the reflector, send an e-mail to: sccc@contesting.com
An archive of reflector messages is available at: Reflector Archive
Reflector Administrator: Doug Brandon, N6RT n6rt[at]arrl[dot]net
To post a message to the reflector, send an e-mail to: sccc@contesting.com
An archive of reflector messages is available at: Reflector Archive
Reflector Administrator: Doug Brandon, N6RT n6rt[at]arrl[dot]net
Membership Badges
Purchase Membership Badge: The Sign Man See sample here.
State QSO Parties
2018
Monthly News (SCCCORE)
August 2018
Welcome aboard to new SCCC member K0XP. Steve moved to Mission Viejo after 34 years on the east coast. He loves low band DXing and contesting as well as VHF contesting. He operates mostly CW. He says he was among those at the very first SCCC meeting.
Also, welcome to Wyatt, AI6V (formerly KK6RDY). Wyatt now has the call formerly held by Carl Cook, who passed away in December, 2014. Wyatt is a senior in high school and is President of the radio club there. He operates in most of the big contests.
In June, I shared the Dayton releases by Kenwood and Yaesu. Not to be overlooked is another release, this one by Heil Sound. The company announced its new BM-17 lightweight headset. It's available as either a single-side or dual-side model, and is available with either a dynamic mic element or an electret. The headset has many features that will make it attractive to amateur radio operators, contesters and DXers alike. Read more about these headsets at Heil Sound.
According to an ARRL announcement on 16 July 2018, Dan Craig, N6MJ, and Chris Hurlbut, KL9A, who operated as Y82V took third place in the recent WRTC contest. They racked up 506,461 points, putting 3,769 CW contacts and 1,052 phone contacts into their log. Chris posted recordings of their entire Y82V 24 hour operation and the log here. Caution, Google will be unable to scan for viruses due to the file size. I would suggest you download the audio files and scan them with your own anti-virus software just to be safe. (I'm personally pretty careful/anal about this stuff.)
more
In the February NAQP RTTY contest, SCCC #1 placed 9th overall. KI6RRN, K6PO, WN6K and KA6WKE logged 172,932 points. KI6RRN finished in 9th place with 101,908 points!
In the February NA Sprint CW, SCCC #1 finished 4th, scoring 56,005 points! It was N6WIN, N6AA, N5ZO, K6LA and AC6T driving the bus on that team. SCCC #2 (K6AW, K6PO, W4EF and NE6I) finished 16th with 21,702 points. Tim, N6WIN finished 3rd in California posting 13,156 points. 20 meters was only open a short time for this one, so 40 and 80 were the money bands. Good show, guys! Some good scores in the results!
In the January NAQP CW, KI6RRN operating at K6NA and using Glenn's call took 4th place overall with 318,886 points! N5ZO was right behind him, finishing 5th with 303,580 points! K6LA finished 4th in California at 185,444. The SCCC #2 team placed 11th overall with 769,102 points. SCCC #1 was 13th 737,513 (only 4 of 5 members submitted logs).
KI6RRN placed 5th in the 2018 CQWW WPX RTTY contest in the USA all band low power category. SCCC had 19 entries and 3,3333,848 points.
Axel also placed 7th in the 2018 ARRL RTTY Roundup in the single op low power category (and tops in W6). K6LL took top honors in the single op unlimited high power category! N6ZFO placed 8th in W6 in the all band high power category. The club had 8 entrants and 212,805 points.
Conditions have definitely left something to be desired so far this year, so all of these scores are especially impressive.
Contest University has published many of the videos from the 2018 sessions. You can find them on their web site at www.contestuniversity.com
On a humorous note, we ran off on a Palm Springs getaway during the CQWW VHF Contest weekend (July 21-22). I figured I'd slip in a few afternoon QSOs when we got home Sunday so I turned the rig on Thursday night to see how the band was doing. Ugh! Receive was fine but there was no transmit audio using WSJT-X! It was working a few days earlier so I started checking my settings and cables. Nothing seemed to cure it. I only had a couple of hours Friday morning to troubleshoot before heading out on the trip with the XYL. I frantically tried this and tried that between packing my bag and loading the truck. Nothing seemed to work. I normally run a Rigblaster so I tried using the internal PC sound card and listened for audio on the output jack of that card. VOILA! I had audio there. Could the Rigblaster have gone south on me? Sure seemed like it. I rebooted it and double checked the cable connections. Nada. I tried reloading the driver for it but that didn't work either. Drat. And now I was out of time. I powered everything down and headed out for a weekend of sun, pool time and adult beverages. I returned Sunday to a parched yard (heat wave in SoCal ramping up!). After watering the thirsty lawn and plants and unpacking from the trip, I sat down at the computer to update the SCCC web page with the NAQP RTTY results. Then I turned on the rig and opened WSJT-X. I changed the settings back from the internal PC sound card to the Rigblaster. And VOILA! All was working again! Who knows what gave there but I was pretty darned happy! Maybe the cat got bored, did some troubleshooting in my radio room, and fixed the problem. I dunno, but I'm not going to complain! I clicked the NA VHF Contest box in the software (thanks for the reminder from N6GP on the SCCC reflector!) and started CQing. In short oder, N6QQ answered. We did the contest exchange and I logged the QSO. This at 2135Z. As I started CQing again, I checked WA7BNM's Contest Calendar to look up the contest. Double Drat! The contest had ended 35 minutes earlier at 2100Z! Oh well, at least the software was working again...
Speaking of VHF contests, there has been much discussion on various reflectors, forums and in the mags lately about FT8 usurping VHF activity, especially on 6 meters. While much slower than CW and SSB, the mode allows for QSOs up to -24 dB S/N! That gives it a distinct advantage over the other two modes from a signal level standpoint. This has driven an amazing increase in activity on all bands, 6 meters included. Many have lamented that most contesters are no longer bothering to tune CW and SSB portions of the band, or at least spending very little time there. It's probably not hard to understand why. Contesting is about making QSOs at the highest rate possible. While no one would argue that FT8 is slower than CW and SSB, no one would argue that FT8 has a distinct signal level advantage. And many (most? all?) of the little pistols and casual contesters are spending most of the contest on FT8. So where do the serious contesters go? To where the QSOs are of course. And right now on VHF, that's FT8 (and to a lesser extent, MSK144). That said, it might be a good thing if we agreed to check the CW and SSB portion of the band at some point every hour. I'm mostly talking about 6 meters here but this applies to the higher frequency bands as well. Perhaps at the 30 minute mark. This strategy has been used with great success on other bands long before FT8 came along. In SoCal, we used to tune a narrow segment of 10m during down years of the sunspot cycle and work each other fast and furiously. We've also done this in CQP years ago, tuning 40 and 80 meters during the day at a pre-determined time when propagation was very short on those bands. We were able to log dozens of "local" contacts that we would never had logged at night, or that would have just "got in the way" of working longer distances. So this technique is not unprecedented. Give it some thought and talk it up on the SCCC reflector. It's a very healthy discussion with FT8 storming the bands and contesters figuring out how to leverage it while balancing it with the legacy modes.
By the way, the developers of WSJT-X are working hard on version 2.0, currently expected to be released in mid to late September. The new version addresses some VHF contest issues currently being experienced. For example, if only one of the users in a VHF contest QSO has the "NA VHF Contest" box checked, exchanges do not work properly. Additionally, rovers (who of course need to append /R to their callsign) have had trouble running FT8 and MSK144. By increasing the number of bits from 72 to 77 in the transmission, the developers are able to cure both ills. And there are other benefits anticipated. You can read more about this at this site.
Parting shot.
You probably won't be surprised to learn that it was Albert Einstein who made the following sage observation: "A clever person solves a problem. A wise person avoids it."
73 for now,
--Dennis NE6I
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Also, welcome to Wyatt, AI6V (formerly KK6RDY). Wyatt now has the call formerly held by Carl Cook, who passed away in December, 2014. Wyatt is a senior in high school and is President of the radio club there. He operates in most of the big contests.
In June, I shared the Dayton releases by Kenwood and Yaesu. Not to be overlooked is another release, this one by Heil Sound. The company announced its new BM-17 lightweight headset. It's available as either a single-side or dual-side model, and is available with either a dynamic mic element or an electret. The headset has many features that will make it attractive to amateur radio operators, contesters and DXers alike. Read more about these headsets at Heil Sound.
According to an ARRL announcement on 16 July 2018, Dan Craig, N6MJ, and Chris Hurlbut, KL9A, who operated as Y82V took third place in the recent WRTC contest. They racked up 506,461 points, putting 3,769 CW contacts and 1,052 phone contacts into their log. Chris posted recordings of their entire Y82V 24 hour operation and the log here. Caution, Google will be unable to scan for viruses due to the file size. I would suggest you download the audio files and scan them with your own anti-virus software just to be safe. (I'm personally pretty careful/anal about this stuff.)
more
In the February NAQP RTTY contest, SCCC #1 placed 9th overall. KI6RRN, K6PO, WN6K and KA6WKE logged 172,932 points. KI6RRN finished in 9th place with 101,908 points!
In the February NA Sprint CW, SCCC #1 finished 4th, scoring 56,005 points! It was N6WIN, N6AA, N5ZO, K6LA and AC6T driving the bus on that team. SCCC #2 (K6AW, K6PO, W4EF and NE6I) finished 16th with 21,702 points. Tim, N6WIN finished 3rd in California posting 13,156 points. 20 meters was only open a short time for this one, so 40 and 80 were the money bands. Good show, guys! Some good scores in the results!
In the January NAQP CW, KI6RRN operating at K6NA and using Glenn's call took 4th place overall with 318,886 points! N5ZO was right behind him, finishing 5th with 303,580 points! K6LA finished 4th in California at 185,444. The SCCC #2 team placed 11th overall with 769,102 points. SCCC #1 was 13th 737,513 (only 4 of 5 members submitted logs).
KI6RRN placed 5th in the 2018 CQWW WPX RTTY contest in the USA all band low power category. SCCC had 19 entries and 3,3333,848 points.
Axel also placed 7th in the 2018 ARRL RTTY Roundup in the single op low power category (and tops in W6). K6LL took top honors in the single op unlimited high power category! N6ZFO placed 8th in W6 in the all band high power category. The club had 8 entrants and 212,805 points.
Conditions have definitely left something to be desired so far this year, so all of these scores are especially impressive.
Contest University has published many of the videos from the 2018 sessions. You can find them on their web site at www.contestuniversity.com
On a humorous note, we ran off on a Palm Springs getaway during the CQWW VHF Contest weekend (July 21-22). I figured I'd slip in a few afternoon QSOs when we got home Sunday so I turned the rig on Thursday night to see how the band was doing. Ugh! Receive was fine but there was no transmit audio using WSJT-X! It was working a few days earlier so I started checking my settings and cables. Nothing seemed to cure it. I only had a couple of hours Friday morning to troubleshoot before heading out on the trip with the XYL. I frantically tried this and tried that between packing my bag and loading the truck. Nothing seemed to work. I normally run a Rigblaster so I tried using the internal PC sound card and listened for audio on the output jack of that card. VOILA! I had audio there. Could the Rigblaster have gone south on me? Sure seemed like it. I rebooted it and double checked the cable connections. Nada. I tried reloading the driver for it but that didn't work either. Drat. And now I was out of time. I powered everything down and headed out for a weekend of sun, pool time and adult beverages. I returned Sunday to a parched yard (heat wave in SoCal ramping up!). After watering the thirsty lawn and plants and unpacking from the trip, I sat down at the computer to update the SCCC web page with the NAQP RTTY results. Then I turned on the rig and opened WSJT-X. I changed the settings back from the internal PC sound card to the Rigblaster. And VOILA! All was working again! Who knows what gave there but I was pretty darned happy! Maybe the cat got bored, did some troubleshooting in my radio room, and fixed the problem. I dunno, but I'm not going to complain! I clicked the NA VHF Contest box in the software (thanks for the reminder from N6GP on the SCCC reflector!) and started CQing. In short oder, N6QQ answered. We did the contest exchange and I logged the QSO. This at 2135Z. As I started CQing again, I checked WA7BNM's Contest Calendar to look up the contest. Double Drat! The contest had ended 35 minutes earlier at 2100Z! Oh well, at least the software was working again...
Speaking of VHF contests, there has been much discussion on various reflectors, forums and in the mags lately about FT8 usurping VHF activity, especially on 6 meters. While much slower than CW and SSB, the mode allows for QSOs up to -24 dB S/N! That gives it a distinct advantage over the other two modes from a signal level standpoint. This has driven an amazing increase in activity on all bands, 6 meters included. Many have lamented that most contesters are no longer bothering to tune CW and SSB portions of the band, or at least spending very little time there. It's probably not hard to understand why. Contesting is about making QSOs at the highest rate possible. While no one would argue that FT8 is slower than CW and SSB, no one would argue that FT8 has a distinct signal level advantage. And many (most? all?) of the little pistols and casual contesters are spending most of the contest on FT8. So where do the serious contesters go? To where the QSOs are of course. And right now on VHF, that's FT8 (and to a lesser extent, MSK144). That said, it might be a good thing if we agreed to check the CW and SSB portion of the band at some point every hour. I'm mostly talking about 6 meters here but this applies to the higher frequency bands as well. Perhaps at the 30 minute mark. This strategy has been used with great success on other bands long before FT8 came along. In SoCal, we used to tune a narrow segment of 10m during down years of the sunspot cycle and work each other fast and furiously. We've also done this in CQP years ago, tuning 40 and 80 meters during the day at a pre-determined time when propagation was very short on those bands. We were able to log dozens of "local" contacts that we would never had logged at night, or that would have just "got in the way" of working longer distances. So this technique is not unprecedented. Give it some thought and talk it up on the SCCC reflector. It's a very healthy discussion with FT8 storming the bands and contesters figuring out how to leverage it while balancing it with the legacy modes.
By the way, the developers of WSJT-X are working hard on version 2.0, currently expected to be released in mid to late September. The new version addresses some VHF contest issues currently being experienced. For example, if only one of the users in a VHF contest QSO has the "NA VHF Contest" box checked, exchanges do not work properly. Additionally, rovers (who of course need to append /R to their callsign) have had trouble running FT8 and MSK144. By increasing the number of bits from 72 to 77 in the transmission, the developers are able to cure both ills. And there are other benefits anticipated. You can read more about this at this site.
Parting shot.
You probably won't be surprised to learn that it was Albert Einstein who made the following sage observation: "A clever person solves a problem. A wise person avoids it."
73 for now,
--Dennis NE6I
less
I Wanna Take You Higher by N6VI
May 2018
I Wanna Take You Higher (Boom Shaka Laka Laka)
So, ten meters isn't open to anywhere. What to do? HF'ers will say, "Go lower", but I did the opposite. I went higher - much higher - to 10 gigahertz, a.k.a. the 3 cm band.
The first weekend in May is the 2 GHz & Up contest, sponsored by the San Bernardino Microwave Society, so I took a 24" dish with a 2-Watt transverter up to Frazier Peak and spent the day. Like its HF counterpart, conditions on 10 GHz were not very good this weekend, but I managed over two dozen contacts with distances up to nearly 600 km. Just as on HF, when conditions are not good enough for SSB, I went to CW for several of the more distant contacts, and that did the trick.
more
Over the past several years, I have made X-band contacts into Nevada and Arizona as well as up to Mt. Shasta in Northern California with this same basic set-up. One recently announced operating award has raised the interest of HF'ers in (Maidenhead System) grid squares, but VHF / UHF / microwave have been chasing them for decades. This past weekend brought my 3 cm grid square total up to 19.
Any of you who have had the opportunity to work with one of N6NB's loaner rover stations have had a taste of what the microwave bands can do. So, while you're waiting for sunspots to return . . .
Marty N6VI
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WB6NOA Interviews Kenwood Chief Design Engineer JA6QXW On The New TS-890S
August 2018
The New Yaesu FT-101D Transceiver
August 2018
PJ1B 1994 CQWW SSB MM
June 2018
NAQP SSB Claimed Scores
August 2018
WN6K SOLP 52,722 K6MUG SOLP 2,600
AA6PW SOLP 24,090 AI6O SOLP 1,664
N6WIN SOLP 3,268 N6AN SOLP 1,344
N5ZO (KI6RRN, KK6NON, N5ZO) M/2 200,489
W6KC M/2 198
SCCC #1 (WQ6X, N6WIN, K6MUG, WN6K, AA6PW) 82,680
SCCC #2 (W6AFA, K5KT, N6AN, K6RO, NE6I) 1,344
NAQP CW Claimed Scores
August 2018
N5ZO SOLP 227,452 AI6O SOLP 20,250
KI6RRN SOLP 181,477 WA6URY SOLP 14,534
N6WIN SOLP 128,763 W6ZL SOLP 14,300
K6NR SOLP 100,303 N6HE SOLP 10,640
W6TK SOLP 98,532 N6AN SOQRP 5,454
N6AA SOLP 92,718 N6GP SOLP 5,035
WN6K SOLP 66,875 W6KC SOLP 4,080
KM6Z SOLP 49,502 KU6CW (N6CW) SOLP 3,960
AA6PW SOLP 23,779 KA6WKE SOLP 1,296
NC6K SOLP 21,004 K0XP SOLP 1,032
NX6T (N6KI, WQ6X, N6NC, N6CY, NN6X, N6EEG, WM6Y) M/2 186,354
SCCC #1 (N5ZO, KI6RRN, N5WIN, W6TK, K6NR) 736,527
SCCC #2 (AI6O, KA6WKE, WQ6X, W6ZL, N6HE) 46,486
SCCC #3 (N6AA, AA6PW, NC6K, N6AN, N6GP) 147,990
NAQP RTTY Claimed Scores
July 2018
KI6RRN SOLP 110,396 KF6RY (W6ZL) SOLP 8,364
WN6K SOLP 41,412 N6WT SOLP 5,050
W6JBR SOLP 11,760 K6MUG SOLP 4,316
AI6O SOLP 9,310
ZF1A (K6GO, NA6MB) M2 48,150
SCCC #1 (KI6RRN, NC6K, WN6K, K6MUG, KA6WKE) 156,124
IARU HF World Championship Claimed Scores
July 2018
N5ZO SOABHPA CW 1,408,579 NI6W (W4EF) SOABHP CW 30,800
KI6RRN(@WA6TQT) SOABLP Mxd 1,014,714 AI6O SOABHPA CW 26,256
K6NA SOABHP CW 771,831 W6KC SOABHPA Mixed 19,580
W6TK SOABHP Mixed 668,457 W6YA SOABHP CW 15,776
N6AA SOABHP CW 491,290 W6JBR SOABHP Mixed 12,369
WN6K SOABLP Mixed 146,510 K6DDJ SOABHPA CW 7,347
KU6CW (N6CW) SOABHP(A) CW 132,192 N6IC SO20MHP CW 5,405
WA6URY SOABHP Mixed 88,288 K6MUG SOABLP 5,040
NK6A SOABHP Mixed 67,710 N6HE SOABLP 2,256
W6ZL SOABLP CW 44,370
NX6T (N6KI, NN6X, N6EEG, KB7V, N6ERD, W2PWS, N6NC, WQ6X) M/S HP 638,352
AF6O (AF6O, K6VCR, N6MI) M/S HP 477,904
RAC Canada Day Claimed Scores
July 2018
KI6RRN SOABLP 173,618 WN6K SOABLP-CW 34,992
W6TK SOABHP 35,464 KK6NON SOABLP-PH 24,256
N5ZO (N5ZO, N6NC) M/2 HP 149,500
Field Day Claimed Scores
June 2018
W6KC 1E(LP) 1,598 AI6O 1D(HP) 668
AI6DO 2B(QRP) 1,090 WA6URY 1D(HP) 347
N6NC (N5ZO) 1D(HP) 956 W6ZL 1E(LP) 244
All Asian Claimed Scores
June 2018
N5ZO SOABHP 106,855 KU6CW (N6CW) SOABHP 2,160
K6NA SOABHP 75,050 W6ZL SOABLP 1,950
WN6K SOABHP 70,757 AI6O SOABHP 1,160
WA6URY SOABHP 16,100
NX6T (N6KI, N6CY, WQ6X) M/SHP 287,280
ARRL June VHF Claimed Scores
June 2018
W6IT SOLP 31,856 KF6I SOHP 750
N6VI SOHP 17,545 K6NA SOLP 561
N6VHF SOHP 13,975 WA6URY SOHP 504
N6MI SOHP 7,344 N6IC SOLP 256
N6QQ SOLP 4,251 W6JK SOLP 248
N6GP/R LIMITED ROVER 4,251 N6VHF SOHP 172
NC6K SOHP 2,322 N6VH SO3B 104
N6AA SOLP 1,560 NE6I SOLP 55
K6MUG SOLP 1,482 N6IC SOLP 32
NI6E (NI6E, AF6RT, KK6KPW, W6FNO) UMOHP 24,050
WPX CW Claimed Scores
May 2018
VY2TT (K6LA) SOABHP 13,193,773 WA6URY SOABHP 220,331
N6CW (@K6NA)* SOSB20HP 2,481,132 AI6O SO(A)ABHP 172,960
KI6RRN SOABLP 2,468,598 NK6A SO(A)ABHP 141,897
AA6PW SO(A)ABHP 2,226,306 WN6K SOABLP 54,813
W6TK SOABHP 1,321,610 N6AN UNKNOWN 44,600
WA6KHK SO(A)ABHP 1,171,794 W6KC SO(A)ABHP 43,596
N5ZO SO(A)ABHP 1,095,680 NI6W (W4EF) SOABHP 36,855
KM6Z SOABLP 821,632 N6IC SOSB20HP 23,744
N6AA SOABHP 445,740 WA7BNM SOSB20LP 14,141
NO6T (N6NC)** SOABHP 394,573 N6HC SOSB20LP 13,260
W6QU (W8QZA) SOABQRP 340,844 KF6I SO(A)ABLP 4,662
NY6N (@W6YI K6AM, N6MJ, N6WIN, W6YI) M/2 HP 11,540,628
NX6T (N6KI, WQ6X, AI6O, K4RB, KB7V, N6CY) M/2 HP 5,470,240
* SCCC Member application received from N6CW 28 May 2018 (welcome back Terry!).
**Remotely operated the N5ZO station on antennas not in use by Marko at the time.
