The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) has revised their official prediction of Solar Cycle 25. They forecast a solar maximum between 105 and 125 and a peak occurring between Nov 2024 and Mar 2026. There is consensus that Cycle 24's Solar Minimum is ongoing or may have already occurred.

CQ Magazine announced that Terry Zivney, N4TZ has resigned as WPX Contest Director after seven years of excellent work. Joseph "Bud" Trench, AA3B has been named his replacement. Bud was first licensed in 1970 and has achieved 15 1st place finishes in CQWW DX CW in the SOLP category using the call sign V26K. He also has a string of Top 10 USA finishes in WPX CW HP dating back to 2005. In WPX RTTY, he has recorded the top North American score six times. The WPX contest is amateur radio's second-most popular competition, second only to the CQWW DX Contest in number of entrants each year.

The raw scores from the 2020 WPX SSB contest have been published. VY2TT (Ken, K6LA) is sitting at 7th Single Op All Band High Power in a very tight race. Less than 100K points separate 3rd from 9th place. It will be interesting to see how this shakes out.

ARRL has published the final results of the 2019 November Sweepstakes CW contest. Marko, N5ZO placed 3rd overall in the SOHP Unlimited category, edging Dave, K6LL by only 232 points! And he was less than 1,000 points behind 2nd place finisher N4BP! The results can be found on ARRL's contest web site.

Icom announced a delay in delivery of the new IC-705 transceiver from March to sometime later this year due to delivery delays of some components. COVID-19 strikes again. The IC-705 is an HF to 430 MHz transceiver with 10 watts output on all bands. It might be of particular interest to contesters that enjoy portable operations or VHF. Purchase reservations can be made with the usual amateur radio equipment vendors.

In need of a new ham radio friendly QTH? Stuck in an HOA governed home? Wanting something larger or better than what you already have? Little to no zoning restrictions? Finding a ham friendly QTH is challenging. HOAs are everywhere it seems, pushing competitive amateur radio operators out, as well as casual ones. Real estate agents aren't voiced in our needs and can be flabbergasted when they hear from us, "not interested in your listing of a 3,000 square foot home, all modern applicances, fantastic view and at a great price" when we tell them "sorry, it's in an HOA? No thanks." As it turns out, KA9FOX, who runs eHam.net, recognized a need for a site that specializes in ham friendly QTHs that are on the market. His site, Ham Radio Homes, is a great starting point to potentially locate your next QTH. As of this writing, there are locations from around the country, including the Prince Edward Island QTH of VY2ZM. Some of these listings come complete with tower(s) and radio(s). Some are rather remote (compared to my suburban location) and I'm not sure what they do for water, trash, and gulp, internet service (a must have for me, and I'm not talking about slow speed internet) but I'm sure the owners, being hams, will be quick to answer any and all questions that you might have. I perused many of the listings and found them intriguing. Perhaps your next contest QTH will be found here. Thanks go out to KA9FOX for this useful site!

In early April, ARRL released a new of version of TQSL, the software that facilitates uploading and downloading log information from LOTW (Logbook of the World). While TQSL is not specific to contesting, many of us upload our contest logs to LOTW soon after the conclusion of the contest. The new version of TQSL, v2.5.2, has several enhancements, including some for rover stations (I.E., those that rove in VHF and microwave contests). The new version uses some log fields that weren't previously used. This may cause problems when uploading in some cases. For example, I use N3FJP's ACLog for day to day logging. TQSL now looks at the OPERATOR field. Some of us, myself included, had configured this field with our name rather than call sign. This causes LOTW to return an error stating that the QSOs are out of the date range of our TQSL Certificate. Odd but... Changing that field to my call sign corrected the problem. Thankfully, someone figured this out and posted on the web. My Certificate and QSO End Date, by the way, are valid through 2023, so clearly it is an odd error message that TQSL was returning. Word was received in mid-April that ARRL is working on v2.5.3 and that version will ignore an entry in the Operator field if it does not appear to be a call sign. Still more on the topic can be found here.

CQ Interstellar DX! Some sources are reporting that NASA has given out a new round of grants for a plan to fit a 1 km (3,281 foot) radio telescope inside a crater on the far side of the moon. The project would enable observing interstellar signals that can't be detected from earth in the 6-30 MHz band. We hams / contesters know those frequencies and their propagation properties well here on earth but what about signals from space? Theoretically, those signals may not be able to penetrate earth's atmosphere, at least at times. Perhaps amateur radio operators from outer space are calling CQ Earth. Do we get mega multipliers for working them in contests? I'm kidding, of course, but it's a fascinating proposal. One article on the subject can be found here.

Team Exuberance, the team of young hams making waves in the contesting world, has postponed the planned WPX CW operation at K3LR until 2021 due to the COVID-19 situation. If you donated to the effort and wish to receive a refund, please contact KG5HVO or NN1C via email. All funds retained will go toward the next Team Exuberance operation.

Contest University 2020 will be held online via Zoom on Thursday May 14, 2020 and is FREE. The course outline can be found here and requires advance registration for the live sessions (registration is now open, and the sessions begin at 5:45 am PDT). As usual, the sessions will be recorded for viewing after the live presentations. Thanks to Tim, K3LR for the notification. Full information can be found here.

Strange but true...
It takes glass one million years to decompose. This means it never wears out and can be recycled an infinite number of times.

73 for now,
--Dennis NE6I

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Our April, 2020 poll was "Did you participate in the National Traffic System (NTS)?"

25% said yes and 75% said no.

Our February, 2020 poll was "What is your thought on the new digital modes as it pertains to contesting?"

27% said great! And another 27% said "not for me." 21% said "they are poisoning amateur radio contesting." Wow, brutal. 14% said they haven't tried them. 8% said "not bad" and 3% said "unsure / too early to day."

Our January, 2020 poll was "Have you ever operated in a RTTY contest?"

86% said yes and 14% said no. 

Our December, 2019 poll was "Have you ever operated in a VHF contest?"

86% said yes and 14% said no. 

Our November, 2019 poll was "Do you operate in very many contests just to have some fun / hand out some contacts?"

86% said yes and 14% said a few.

Our October, 2019 poll was "LOTW has revolutionized QSLing. How do you respond to hard copy QSLs that you receive after a contest?

87% said they send a return QSL the same way the incoming card was received (direct or via the Bureau). 13% said they send electronic QSLs only (IE, LOTW, eQSL, QRZ and/or other).

Our September, 2019 poll was "If you could go or are going on a Contest Dxpedition next year, where would you go?"

75% said to the Caribbean! 25% said somewhere in the Pacific.

Our August, 2019 poll was a two parter. "Do you miss (or wish we had) SCCC pizza meetings?"

20% said Yes, I really miss them. Another 20% said Yes, I hear they were a good time. 10% said I could take them or leave them. Another 10% said No, I'm not that interested in attending meetings at this time. 60% said I probably wouldn't be able to attend many of them due to distance or other reason.

The second question was "If we had SCCC meetings, I would..."

10% said Attend as many as possible. 20% said Attend them if they were less than an hour's drive. 40% said Attend now and then. 20% said Might attend some of them, and 10% said Probably wouldn't attend any of them.

Our July, 2019 poll was "When was your first contest?"

16% said 2010 or later. 5% said 2000-2009 and another 5% said 1990-1999. 32% said 1970-1979. 26% said 160-1969 and 16% said 1950-1959.

Our June, 2019 poll was "Have you ever operated a Dxpedition in a contest?"

25% said yes, as part of a multi-op DXpedition. 25% said no. 20% said yes, as a single op. Another 20% said no, but I would like to! And 10% said yes, both as a multi-op and as a single-op.

Our May, 2019 poll was "Have you ever operated mobile or portable in a contest (not a DXpedition)?

35% said both, 35% said no, 20% said portable and 10% said mobile.

Our April, 2019 poll was "For manual CW sending, what do you use?"

65% of our respondents said a keyer. 35% said contest software. 12% said a straight key 
and 5% said a bug. 8% said other.

Our March, 2019 poll was "What logging software do you use in contests?"

75% of our respondents said N1MM+. 10% said Writelog and another 10% said N3FJP. 5% each said 
TRLog/TR4W, Win-test or other.

Our February, 2019 poll was "Do you use high, low or QRP power in contests?"

56% of our respondents said high power. 21% said low power and 13% said QRP.

Our January, 2019 poll was "What brand of radio to you use primarily in contests?"

25% of our respondents said Yaesu. 18.75% said Kenwood. 12.5% said Icom. 6.25% said Flex, & 43.75% said Other. 
We should have included Elecraft! 

Our December, 2018 poll was "Have you ever hosted a guest operator at your station?"

11% of our respondents said yes. 89% said no.

Our November, 2018 poll was "Have you ever operated multi-op in a contest (home or away)?"

80% of our respondents said yes. 20% said no.

Our October, 2018 poll was "What is your favorite contest mode?"

76% of our respondents favored CW. 12% favored SSB and 6% favored RTTY. 6% had no favorite mode.

Our September, 2018 poll was "What is your favorite contest?"

CQP took the top spot. CQWW DX, WPX, NA Sprint and Sweepstakes all tied for second.

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I have a two year-old SteppIR DB36 with 80 M dipole option for sale. The stepper motors, controller, etc all work perfectly, and the boom and trombones/straight fiberglass poles are in good shape. You will likely need to replace some of the small parts (some bolts and Nylock nuts), but can have a working DB-36 for less than half of what it cost new. I'm selling the antenna because the trees near the antenna became so large that tilting it over was becoming impossible, and I purchased a DB-18E to replace it. I have some extra fiberglass poles that I will include, and I guarantee that the antenna will work (motors, etc.). Due to the weight and size, I'm thinking it's going to have to be a pickup in the San Diego area. I might be willing to remove the heat shrink couplings and try to box it if the buyer covers the shipping charges (FedEx ground). Asking $3500 for everything. Seller: Eric, NC6K egruff [at] cox[dot]net Posted 9 Oct 2018, renewed 30 Apr 2020

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Perhaps one of the more well known products now on the market is the Geochron World Clock and their Digital 4K version. They are beautiful devices and quite functional.

The new kid on the block is the Veritium HFClock, manufactured by Veritium Research. Veritium's primary business is medical equipment but the engineers are hams, and they created the HFClock as a side project. They released it to the market about a year ago, and it has evolved steadily since then through approximately monthly software updates.

The HFClock is much more than a clock. Most of the screen space is occupied by the Mercado map with daylight and darkness shown. And it doesn't end there. The Clock comes in a few different desktop models with frame as well as a Raspberry Pi version that connects to the user's own external monitor. These Clocks are currently available exclusively through Gigaparts.

It was this latter version (Model 1850-RP) that caught my attention. I was interested in running it to a large monitor hanging above my ham station.

Mine arrived quickly and I set about to get it operational. Unfortunately, the one I received was running a little older version of software and the short and sweet quick start flyer did not match the software on the unit.

The first step upon booting the unit up is to connect to the internet, either wired to your modem or router, or via wi-fi. I chose the latter since my router is across the room from my ham station where the HFClock was going to reside. I made three attempts to connect to my wi-fi but was met with failure each time. The Clock told me an invalid username or password had been entered. There is only one user review at the Gigaparts site as I write this, and he too could not get wi-fi working. I reached out to WB0OEW because it appeared to me (thanks to our world wide web) that he was the creator of this device. Within an hour, he responded but asked me to contact Veritium support. Per his agreement with them, they handle all inquiries related to this product.

So I did. Veritium is in New Jersey and it was now well past their closing time. Never-the-less, a response came back from Gino Morello, N2TBN within minutes. He happened to be at home and saw the email come in. He inquired as to which model I had. I sent my answer back and headed to dinner. His response came back quickly but I did not have a chance to see it until the following morning.

Gino recommended that I temporarily connect the Clock via CAT5 to my router, boot up, and select YES to udpate to the latest firmware. I was then to power off and disconnect the CAT5 cable, then power the unit back up and go into Setup. Then enter my wi-fi info. He told me he would be in the office and provided his direct telephone number.

His instructions worked perfectly and my new Clock connected to the wi-fi router without issue. I decided to call Gino anyway and ask him to quickly walk me through the many onscreen options. He was more than happy to do so, and in fact, I could tell how excited he was about this product! He sounded like a kid in a candy store!

As you can see in the photos, you can enter your call sign (we hams are vain son of a guns, aren't we?) and your grid indicator. Naturally, you can change the font color and background color of your call sign to something that you prefer. The clock connects to an NTP server via the internet for very accurate time. UTC time is displayed in the upper left and your local time down lower on the left side. You can elect to turn off NTP and manually change UTC time to whatever you like, allowing you to see daylight and darkness areas at that time of day. Nifty!

You can click anywhere on the map and see information related to that location (displayed in the lower left where it says "DX." That box will include distance from your QTH and beam heading. You can click on the heading line and toggle between short path and long path headings.

The box to the right of your call sign can toggle between VOACAP info (MUF and LUF), sunspot numbers, and solar flux. The next box over along the top can display a DX Cluster, Planetary KP, or GOES 15 Xray information. I had some trouble getting it to connect to several clusters but finally found one that worked. I don't find that display particularly useful because there is no way (that I know of) to set filters, but it's an entertaining piece of the display. It may be that if one logs into the cluster via the web or a cluster client, sets the filters, then connects via the HFClock, the filters may work. I haven't had a chance to try this just yet. I should mention that you can click on any displayed call sign in the DX Cluster window to instantly see information about that location in the DX window in the lower left.

To the right of that box is a display of the sun. The user can toggle through several options there as well. Composite, Magnetogram, and 6173A related to the Solar Dynamic Observatory are the options.

The upper right corner of the display shows the NCDXF beacon key. Clicking on this box toggles display of those beacons on the Mercado map. There is also an option to turn your display on and off at times you specify within this box. This, like most other things in this product, was suggested by a user. His display was in a room where he wanted it to automatically turn on and off at times he desired without any interaction on his part.

By the way, the windows on the left side of the screen (DE and DX) also show sunrise and sunset times for you and the DX location you have clicked on.


The user can click on the letters "DX" in that lower lefthand pane to bring up a list of satellites. You may select any one of them to display tracking information on the Mercado map in real time. During my call with Gino, we looked at a couple of them together. Ironically, the International Space Station (ISS) was flying overhead above my QTH, and we watched it pass through the window showing potential reception at my location (also displayed on the map). Very cool! Gino tells me that the user may edit the satellite list and RSS feed sources (described below) by tunneling into the HFClock using SSH (IE, via Putty or similar software) from another PC elsewhere on your network.



In the very lower left of the Mercado map, you will see a small box that says "RSS." Clicking on that toggles a news feed along the bottom of the map. The user can click on any news item to get the full story on that headline. As I type this, I am seeing some DX news (including the recent VP8PJ DXpedition).

The unit itself is very small, about the size of a pack of playing cards. I was happy about that because I don't have a lot of room on my desk. It does have four USB ports (in addition to the port for CAT5). I use a wireless mouse to click around on the display. I used a wired keyboard in my first attempt to do wi-fi set up but this is not required as the unit displays a screen keyboard that can be used in conjunction with the mouse to enter text. The unit does run a bit on the warm side so I recommend taking that into account when deciding where to place it. It should be able to be placed on the back side of your monitor using Velcro or something similar if desired. Video out to the monitor is via an HDMI cable (not included).

Gino tells me that coming soon is the ability to control certain models of antenna rotator by simply clicking on the map (and I presume a DX spot)!

I must say, I am really enjoying this HFClock, and I found Gino's enthusiam exciting. He told me more than once that if I had any suggestions for further improvement or display options to please let him know. The product's evolution has been driven by user feedback! I have mine connected to a 32 inch display hanging on the wall above my station. You are limited in this regard only by your creativity.

The manual for the unit can be found on Veritium Research's web site, and a couple of videos can be found on YouTube.




Kudos to Veritium for a very fine line of products! Click here for more information about their clocks, and remember, Gigaparts is the current U.S. distributor.


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