In a very close competition, Vladimir Askenov RW1AC and Alexey Mikhailov RA1AIP using the call R32F won a very narrow victory over Team Estonia, R33A operated by ES5TV/ES2RR in the 2010 World Radiosport Team Championship.

In a demonstration of how close the competition was, Team Estonia garnered 4,084,889 points, 99.675% of the winning Russian score. The R32F team won with a total score of 4,098,162.

Even though R33A came in 2nd place overall they did win the award for most SSB contacts and multipliers.

Operating as R33M, Dan Craig N6MJ and Chris Hurlbut KL9A came in 3rd place with a total score of 3,942,904. Dan and Chris managed to make 3,549 contacts and lost no multipliers during log checking.  The competition was so close, had Dan and Chris made just 16 more mults, they would have won overall.

For fourth place S50A/S57AW, they had too many log errors and ended up losing 8.5% of their QSO’s – 323 in all, dropping them from second to fourth.

In fifth place, K5ZD/W2SC had the same problem as N6MJ/KL9A – not enough multipliers.

Final Scores of WRTC 2010 Teams

1 – R32F   RW1AC/RA1AIP 4,098,162
2 – R33A   ES5TV/ES2RR 4,084,889
3 – R33M   N6MJ/KL9A 3,942,904
4 – R39D   S50A/S57AW 3,907,540
5 – R34P   K5ZD/W2SC 3,889,908
6 – R32K   RV3BA/RA3CO 3,776,544
7 – R32R   LY9A/LY6A 3,615,024
8 – R31X   UA3DPX/UA4FER 3,594,820
9 – R37M   G4PIQ/G4BUO 3,558,636
10 – R36C   LY9Y/LY7Z 3,502,044

By all accounts, the competition was a success and fair.

You can read more at Radio-sport.net

(credit: Radio-sport.net)

73, Jack K4SAC

Back several years ago, there used to be a contest called the Novice Roundup. It was contest where the old timers would get on the air and work only novices.

Well the ARRL has decided to re-invent the Novice Roundup into a contest called the Rookie Roundup.

The first Rookie Roundup is scheduled for April 18th, and will be SSB. The six hour event — from 1800 UTC-2359 UTC — will be held on the third Sunday of April, August, and December. SSB, RTTY, and CW will be featured in the different months

Now you might be asking who is defined as a rookie? Well the qualifications are that you must have been licensed less than 3 years, no matter what license class you hold.  If you received your license in 2008, 2009 or 2010, you’re eligible to compete as a Rookie.

“The ARRL Rookie Roundup also embraces a lot of new technology, including live scoring and reporting of the results within a few hours after the event ends. Thanks to Gerry Hull, W1VE, and the team at getscores.org, results will be available very shortly after the event. To officially enter, stations should log on to getscores.org and choose one of two ways to report their score: by using a Web browser logging page to enter QSOs in real-time or from a standalone log, or by reporting their score summary using getscores.org‘s Universal Score Uploader. Both Rookies and Non-rookies must complete their entries within one hour after the contest ends. More details are available on the Rookie Roundup blog.” (credit ARRL website)

The CW event will be in December with the RTTY event following up in August 2011.

This should be a fun 6 hours event, so get out there and work the newbies!

73, Jack K4SAC

You can find a copy of the rules by clicking here

The contest runs for 48 hours and starts at 0000 UTC Saturday and ends at 2400 UTC Sunday.

All non WARC bands 160-10 are eligible for contesting.

Entries for the Phone competition must be emailed or postmarked by 2359 UTC Monday, April 5, 2010.

73, and have fun! de K4SAC

If you look, you can find a contest almost every weekend of the year. Some of the contests use digital modes. If you are tired of the traditional CW or SSB or RTTY modes, the digital modes can give you an opportunity to experience a different side of ham radio and contesting. You can also qualify for different awards!

This post is going to focus on a digital mode called Hellschreiber.

Hellschreiber, or Hell, is a method of sending and receiving text using facsimile technology. As the words are decoded, they are not “decoded” in the sense of PSK31 or RTTY, but rather are painted on the screen.

Many people think Hellschreiber is a new mode, born out of the digital era, but in fact Hellschreiber was patented in 1929 by a German engineer named Rudolph Hell.  Landline press machines used Hell up until the 1980′s.

Hell was actually used during the Spanish Civil War(1933) by the Germans and during WWII it was used in portable military installations.

There are several different modes of Hell, but the most popular one is Feld-Hell. Feld-Hell is a single-tone, on-off keyed system with 122.5 dots/second, or about a 35 WPM text rate.  FH has a narrow bandwidth of about 75 Hz.

Screenshot of Feld Hell

Randy K7AGE has a good YouTube video that explains Hellschreiber.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yR-EmyEBVqA]

N4QLB posted this YouTube tribute to Rudolph Hell.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bD9NHVe8NcU]

So now you are interested in trying out this interesting mode? Well all you need is a pc and a interface to your radio.

There are several places you can purchase an interface for your radio:

• http://home.att.net/~n8st/DDI-index.html (Donner’s Digital Interfaces)
• http://www.packetradio.com/ (Buxxcomm)
• http://www.westmountainradio.com/RIGblaster.htm  (Rigblaster)
• http://dxfile.free.fr/fichiers/n9art.pdf  (How to build your own..PDF format ..Adobe reader required to read)

Digital Interface

As far as software, there are a few different software packages out there that support Hell.

• http://www.mixw.net/  (MixW)
• http://www.ham-radio-deluxe.com/  (Ham Radio Deluxe)
• http://f6cte.free.fr/index_anglais.htm (Multi-PSK)
• http://xoomer.virgilio.it/aporcino/Hell/index.htm (IZ8BLY software)

Feld-Hell is classified as J2B and can be sent over CW or phone frequencies. However there are some “suggested” frequencies to make it easier to find people

The Northern California Contest Club sponsers the NCCC Ladder. The NCCC ladder is a 30 minute contest. You can find the current schedule here and the rules here.

There is a score calculating program located here.

Because of the short duration, time synchronization with WWV is essential.

You can only use 20,40, and 80 meters spreading 30-45khz from the edge of the bands.

The exchange is serial #, name, state/province.

Dupes allowed after one intervening QSO on same band or back-to-back with band change.

Post to the 3830 reflector via the 3830 submittal web page for the NS Ladder Competition and submit your logs by Sunday night following contest; deadline is one week.

Special prizes, probably CA wine, to the leaders in our four divisions.  Your 9 highest scores out of 14 total events count toward the award in all except the Newcomers Division, which is restricted to those who have not entered NS Ladder in the past three years.  NS Ladder X prize to the first station with 3000 or more points in a single half hour Ladder session (courtesy, K6VVA). 

Divisions:

• East of the Mississippi River (Canada: East of Manitoba/Ontario border)
• West of the Mississippi River (excluding people in the next category)
• NCCC member
• Newcomers (different award requirements, tentatively highest 6 scores in last 10 weeks of NS Ladder)

First time contestants can read the tips here.

That is this week’s contest spotlight, if you have a contest you would like spotlighted send an e-mail to k4sac (at) att.net

73, Jack K4SAC

NW4T (WA4IJQ, AA4RL, and K4SAC-ops)

Call               QSOs   Sec Cntry   hr      Score Club

All M/S LP

VE2OJ(@VA2BW)     1082    77    23          224,200

VE3MGY             724    73    17  16.0    132,750 CCO

NE4S               615    72    11   19H    105,327 SECC

W3WH               388    68     9    12     61,831 Wireless Association

AD8J               418    60     5   8.5     56,166 Allegheny Valley Rad

N1WR               285    56    18     7     46,620 PVRC

NW4T               304    64     9           46,355 KCG

VE3FRX             256    61    16    10     42,885 CCO

K4EDI              293    58    11           42,711 TCG

N6PE               229    70     8           37,596 SCCC

K8GT               224    53     4   7.6     26,220 MRRC

N3ZA               165    47    15     8     22,875 FRC

KM6I               125    41     4     6     10,373 NCCC

K6JEB               77   157    33  6:07      5,338 NCCC

AL2F                57    54     3     5      4,305

K6VVA               50    29     3     ~      3,488 NCCC

Jose has created an excellent resource of CQ WW history from 1940 to present, in PDF format.

You can find his website here

Jose obviously put a lot of time and effort into creating this resource and I just want to give a shout out to Jose for providing this information to contesters.

Great job Jose!

73, de K4SAC

Save the dates 1500Z December 26th to 1500Z December 27th, 2009 for this followup to the ARRL 160 contest.

You can find the rules here

This contest is sponsered by the Boring Amateur Radio

Check it out!!

Band conditions were exceptionally good this year.

The noise level at our QTH on Saturday had dropped to a S3 which made pulling those weak ones out much easier.

Heard a ND but wasnt able to work him.  Didn’t hear a AK or HI station but did work several DX stations and heard an east coaster working a UA1 which I thought was pretty neat for 160.

Propagation is funny on 160 when you aren’t a regular user of the band. The signals you hear can surprise you…. we worked a station from Sweden and I figured it was a pirate because the signal was so strong and loud. I would have expected for it to have some auroral flutter coming over the pole, but it was a solid signal.

We operated FD style, in a tobacco barn in the middle of nowhere using a generator…..of course this weekend the temp dropped to 19 degrees outside, had it been the weekend before it would have been a confortable 50 degrees.

As quiet as it was, I think we will be operating CQ WW 160 from there…hopefully it wont be as cold……..

73, Jack K4SAC