Hip, hip, hooray! According to an announcement made 23 Sept by NASA and NOAA, Solar Cylce 25 has begun! Their announcement stated that the Cycle 24 solar minimum occurred in December. Our sun is so variable that it can take months after the fact to accurately confirm the minimum. The announcement that we are now heading into Cycle 25 is fantastic news, long awaited by contesters and DXers alike. As you probably know, the rise in sunspot numbers occurs much more rapidly toward the peak than it does during the decline toward the minimum. This means that improved conditions are not long off! What remains to be seen is whether the peak will again be ho-hum as it was in Cycle 24, or, will it be one of the best ever as predicted by some scientists. It goes without saying that we will be hoping for the latter! Get those antennas ready!

There are two new rule changes to the CQWW DX contests. The first is that paper logs and email logs are no longer. All submissions shall be done via the web submitter. Most other major DX contests have gone this route as well. The second change is under the Unportsmanlike Conduct section. Running stations are prohibited from more than three consecutive contacts without sending their callsign.

The final 2020 CQ WPX SSB results have been published. CQ reported a record 7,597 logs were received, smashing the previous high by 38%. Clearly, the COVID pandemic had more people at home and on the radio during the contest weekend! Marko, N5ZO used the NT6Q call sign and placed 4th in the USA Single Op, All Band, Low Power. Bill, W8QZA operated W6QU to the top spot USA in the Single Op All Band QRP category. Full results and more can be found here.

Preliminary results of the August NAQP CW contest have been published. Axel, KI6RRN, running the NO6T call, is atop the standings! Nice going, Axel! View the standings here.

Preliminary results of the September NA Sprint have just been published. Dan, N6MJ had the highest score with 12 band changes or less (low number of band changes suggests the operator wasn't operating SO2R) at 14,364, and appears to have finished 5th overall. Marko, N5ZO had the Top Golden Log (no errors) at 312 QSOs! Outstanding! SCCC #1 turned in a 4th place team finish.

The raw scores for the WW Digi DX Contest have been published. Sitting atop the Single Op Low Power All Band standings is Levi, K6JO! Hopefully, that score will hold up through log checking!

The preliminary results of the August NAQP CW contest have also been published. Axel, KI6RRN piloted NO6T (WA6TQT station) to a narrow victory if the scores hold. Second place finisher K0RF had 23 more Q's but 6 less multipliers.

Have you ever wondered what the SFI, A index and K index are and why they are so important to RF propagation in the HF bands? Generally, the higher the SFI, the better! The lower the A and K indices are, the better. However, the three interact to influence propagation. And there are several factors that influence them. The article Understanding Solar Indices" written by Ian Poole, G3YWX appeared in the September, 2002 issue of QST and is a good primer on the subject.


The new Elecraft K4 HF transceiver was announced at the 2019 Dayton Hamvention. Unfortunately, there have been some delays in shipping. The web site says September but rumors around the bands say shipments are now delayed until December. You can have a look at the K4's manual here. The new rig is expected to be very popular with contesters.



Tom, KC0W has been around. A search of his call or a visit to his QRZ page will tell the story. Tom obviously enjoys traveling to many off the beaten path DX locales and putting the deserving in the log. He also operates from those locations in contests when things sync up. Not necessarily as a serious contest competitor but he uses the contests to put even more folks in the log. He was copied, for example in the late September CQWW DX RTTY contest. Tom moved somewhat recently to Saipan, Marianas Island and that's where he was for the RTTY contest. Now, on the west coast, Marianas isn't super rare as a DXCC entity, but who wouldn't want to snag him for a mult in a contest? His preferred mode of operation is CW but he has dabbled in FT8 and RTTY at times. Thanks, Tom! Hope to work you in the contests!

As noted a couple of issues ago, Jim, N6TJ and Dick, N6AA are working on a physical, onsite Visalia gathering that by the way, is not part of the virtual Visalia International DX & Contesting Convention. The latter will be virtual only due to the ongoing COVID pandemic. The former will observe social distancing and other safe protocols and is offered by Jim and Dick as an in-person event. A web site has been created and a link to it appears on the right hand side of our SCCC web page. The event is not sponsored by SCCC but is of interest in light of the fact that two of our long time members are organizing it. Special rates and possibly a group dinner are being made available. Their web site offers links to the hotel reservation as well as a non-binding event registration page. There is no cost to register but registering does help the organizers gauge interest and plan for the possible dinner event.

Lastly, I call out to all of you SCCC members to send me updates on things you are doing...new rig, new antenna, new accessory, refurbishing something, new-to-you contest that you recently entered and enjoyed, or maybe it's planning one of these things in coming months. Maybe you would like to tell the story of how you became a ham. Or a contester. What you did differently in last June's Field Day. Or a story from one of your participations in a multi-op or ContestExpedition. Send me a blurb about something so we can share it in this space or on the Club web site. We all enjoy reading about these things. Share something, or I may have to shame you into it! (TNX in advance!)

Strange but true...
It is illegal to drink beer out of a bucket while you are sitting on a curb in St. Louis. Good to know!

73 for now,
--Dennis NE6I

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The California QSO Party (CQP) just keeps getting better and better! Sponsored by the Northern California Contest Club (NCCC), the organizing team recently sent out a questionaire to 2019 pre-registrants that did not participate to get a better idea on why they didn't. They also have made some improvements and added more awards to the contest. This year's contest is October 3 and 4. The following was received via email.

There are five highlights to note for CQP 2020:

1. Special 1x1 callsign SEQUOIA stations
Achieve a beautiful commemorative certificate when you spell out the word SEQUOIA by contacting these stations. We're also planning a more competitive challenge by recognizing S/O stations that make as many 1x1 SEQUOIA QSOs as possible across bands and modes. See your callsign in Top 10 SEQUOIA QSO tables by entry class. Win a special award given to the stations with the most SEQUOIA QSOs per entry class.

2. Awards
40 bottles of wine, 52 plaques, certificates, T-shirts

New for CQP 2020:
a) New S/O Comeback Plaques
Did you participate in CQP 2018 but skip CQP 2019? We miss you and want you back in CQP 2020. Win a comeback plaque for the highest CQP 2020 score by a station that submitted a log in CQP 2018 but didn't submit a log in CQP 2019. Separate plaques will be awarded for stations inside CA and outside CA.

b) New S/O Improvement Plaques
Did you participate in CQP 2019 part time and submit a log? We want to encourage you to participate longer in CQP this year. Win an improvement plaque with the highest CQP 2020 operating time increase over CQP 2019. Separate plaques will be awarded for stations inside CA and outside CA.

3. ARRL State QSO Party Challenge
With a lot of QSOs possible in CQP, you can dramatically improve your standing in the ARRL State QSO Party Challenge.
Current leaderboard:
Use the California QSO Party to propel yourself to the next level in the ARRL State QSO Party Challenge.

4. A Focus on Participation
Knowing that some past county expeditions will not be able to safely participate this year, a county sweep may be difficult to achieve. We are focusing on overall participation in CQP 2020. We think participation inside CA as well as outside CA will be at record levels this year. Make sure you don't miss out on all the activity this year in CQP!

5. Rules Updates
We have made some minor rules changes this year. Rally times and frequencies have been improved to inspire more QSOs on 80m, 160m and 10m.

Multi-operator, expedition and mobile categories are still allowed in CQP 2020. We are asking everyone to review our operating guidelines during the pandemic.

We are also requiring all Multi-operator stations to a href="http://www.cqp.org/register.html" target=_blank">register before CQP.

73...
CQP 2020 Organizing Team

John Dorr, K1AR (CQWW Contest Director) has announced some modifications to the CQWW DX contest rules effective with the 2020 contest.

*New Category Nomenclature*
The multi-operator category names have been changed to be more consistent with other contests. The CQ WW contest now uses Multi-Single, Multi-Two, and Multi-Multi as the standard for all logs and reporting. No other changes have been made to these categories.

*Station Location*
Amplifiers are now included in the previously defined 500-meter diameter circle description of station locations.

Paper Logs
Effective with the 2020 contest, paper logs will no longer be accepted for the CQ WW. Uploading logs via the Web is the only approved method for submitting a log. Logs can be uploaded at: cqww.com/logcheck.

A complete listing of the 2020 rules has been posted at cqww.com/rules.htm. Updated translations for a variety of languages are also available.

As always, if you have any questions, please submit them via our contact form at cqww.com/contact where you can expect to receive a response as soon as possible.

Anthony, K8ZT has put together an interesting document aggregating scores for the 2020 State QSO Party Challenge. He pulls the data from Bruce's, WA7BNM 3830scores.org posting. Note that there are two tabs in this web based Excel document. The second tab, QSP Challenge - By Score, appears to be sorted by total QSOs in the Challenge. Axel, KI6RRN currently (as of Aug 25, 2020) sits fourth in the standings there. I would expect that he will take first if he puts in a full effort during the California QSO Party! Go Axel!



One of the the ultimate DX receiving antennas, the Arecibo Observatory Reflector Dish was damaged during the early morning hours of August 10. One of the three inch support cables fell and caused a 100 foot long gash in the dish. It also damaged a half dozen or so reflector panels. Arecibo has been used to track and image near-Earth asteroids as well as listened for possible signals from other civilizations in space. The cause of the cable failure is under investigation.



Strange but true...
Bullfrogs do not sleep!

73 for now,
--Dennis NE6I

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Peter, K3PS sent the bio below. (photo is him at the NX6T superstation in Bonsall, CA)

Unlike many hams I know, I do not have a background in computers, electronics or engineering. I became interested in radio as an active CBer growing up in New Jersey in the 70s. Back when CB had 23 channels, I had a PAL VFO and illegally worked the top of the 11M band on sideband with a bunch of others. Good DX as those frequencies were pretty empty. They eventually became channels 24-40. I always knew I wanted to graduate to amateur radio, but didn't do so until 1994.
Shortly after I got my General, Ron K2RP took me to my first Field Day with the Golden Triangle ARC in Wildomar. It was at that event where I got hooked on HF and bitten by the contesting bug. After seeing a contesting presentation at PARC by Dennis N6KI, I joined up with the NX6T group and have now been active with them for over 10 years.
I am a Life Member of ARRL and over the years, I have been active with RACES, ARES and CERT. Also a VE with SANDARC and ARRL. I am also a longtime member of the Downtown San Diego Lions Club, having served in every elected position.
I was a solo practitioner attorney for 28 years and now work as a Commissioner with the San Diego Superior Court. I am involved in judicial education and serve on the faculty of the Witkin California Judicial College. I was recently selected as California Court Commissioner of the Year and in September, I will be sworn in as president of the California Court Commissioners Association.
73, Peter, K3PS

Will we ever get out of the solar minimum of Cycle 24? It seems like it is dragging on forever, doesn't it? NASA's latest predictions assume we hit the minimum last December. Let's hope! Cycle 25's peak is predicted to happen in the summer of 2023, just three short years from now. It's peak is expected to replicate that of Cycle 24, which was nothing to write home about unfortunately. But hey, we'll take it. Anything is better than what we are experiencing right now. NASA's writeup can be found here.

On the other hand, here is a prediction we can all enjoy! Scientists associated with a variety of institutions in the USA and UK used a mathematical technique known as Hilbert Transform to analyze 270 years of monthly sunspot numbers. Their calculations predict that Cycle 25 will have a peak that rivals the top few since records began! Let's hope! You can read the article here (July 14 article) and the scientists' full paper here.

The annual ARRL Field Day event (often called "not a contest" but many groups and clubs treat it as such) was a different animal this past June. ARRL, due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, allowed folks operating from home to attribute their scores to their club. And folks took this to heart. ARRL reports that as of July 16, more than 8,700 online entries had been received and paper logs were starting to arrive as well. Many SCCCers operated from home, making due versus attending their usual club activity. We hams adapt! What will ultimately be interesting is how club scores were impacted.

The IARU HF World Championship was held the second weekend of July. Conditions were what you would expect for the bottom of the sunspot cycle (SFI 69 A 3 K 0). Kent, N6WT reported there were a lot of Europeans on 20 meters. Larry, K6RO commented that there were only two bands open at any given time. He had a nice 147 QSO run on 40m after dinner, and then had a nice string of EU HQ stations on 20. Drew, N7DA had some fun working some DX on 20 at 10 pm. He then moved to 40. Don, NK6A experienced some great openings on 20 late Saturday afternoon. He even worked three Israeli stations in a row. Ryan, AI6DO tried this contest for the first time. He said that running QRP with dipoles at 22 feet is "character building." Axel, KI6RRN used the NO6T club call and operated the WA6TQT station. He put in one heckuva score! Dan, N6MJ was at the N6WIN station and used the ND7K call sign. Tim had torn down the station, not expecting anyone to use it this summer, so they had to set it up from scratch. He and Chris, KL9A along with Axel and Mitch, K7RL agreed to post to Live Scores, with a gentleman's agreement not to peek nor have anyone tell them about the others. I'm sure that made for some great scoreboard watching for the rest of us! Dick, N6AA jumped in Saturday night after a short trip and felt that conditions were good. Ken, K6LA had a visit from Murphy. Three hours in, the computer USB port stopped working. 45 minutes later, he finally had things working again. Then, he goofed when setting his alarm clock and slept three hours instead of one. Bruce, WA7BNM did 100% S&P but found that to be not very efficient on SSB. In retrospect, he feels he probably should have stuck to CW only rather than Mixed. John, W6JBR reported low QRN and QRM during the contest. He snagged his first SSB QSO with China and was pleasantly surprised to hear Asia in the middle of the night on 20. Alex, W6AFA found conditions poor overall and surprisingly few JA's on 40m. Dana, K6NR found conditions good considering where we are with the sunspot cycle. 20m was great later on Saturday, and he surprsingly found some Europeans to work on 15 and 10. Don, N6IC said it was great to have 15 open to Europe on Saturday for the first time in quite a while. Glenn, K6NA experienced a lot of power line and solar panel noise. He was surprised by the amazing night time conditions on 20 and the pretty good conditions on 15 during the day. He said, "Both bands sounded like 'the good old days!"

Dean, N6DE wrote an interesting article entitled CQP Goals and Planning in the July issue of the NCCC's newsletter "The Jug." His article explores the number of hams that entered their goals on the CQP web site in 2019, as well as how many entered their intent to participate and yet didn't. (Spoiler alert: 15% did not participate despite having intentions to do so. That seems to be a high percentage.) Things come up but to NCCC's credit, they are trying to understand the whys in an effort to continue to bring more participation to the contest, already the largest of the state QSO Parties. It is interesting reading and can be found about 1/4 of the way down the page of The Jug bulletin here.

Strange but true...
Were you a paperboy when you were a youngster? If so, you are in good company. Gene Simmons of the rock band Kiss managed two paper routes when he as 14 years old, making $65 a week! Some others that were paper boys are Walt Disney, Wareen Buffett, Martin Luther King, Jr., Tom Brokaw, Tom Cruise, Kathy Ireland and Joe Biden.

And a double dip of strange this month! Dogs may use Earth's magnetic field to take shortcuts! I have often wondered how my little long hair chihuahua always seems to know the way home. On our normal evening walks, she pulls the leash to guide me on the route she is used to, especially as we get half way out and then round a corner to head back home. Really nothing mysterious about that I thought. But I can pick her up and go a couple blocks in a different direction, put her down, and she immediately starts pulling to head home. How does she know the way when we are in a strange (to her) part of the neighborhood?! Could this article explain it? Cue up The Twilight Zone music!

73 for now,
--Dennis NE6I

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Jim, N6TJ and Dick, N6AA are working on a, what they call, "mini-Visalia" to be held March 19-21, 2021 at the Visalia Wyndham (formerly the Holiday Inn). The emphasis will be on friends getting together, with minimal structured events. The plan is to have a catered BBQ Saturday afternoon, possibly followed by a gathering. The Wyndham is has a block of rooms for attendees at $95/night. Vendors have expressed interest in showing up as well. Jim says they will perhaps organize a catered dinner at the hotel for Friday. They are in the very early stages of planning. If interested, please contact Jim at N6TJ [[at]] sbcglobal.net. A web site is being set up and I'm sure you can get updates on the SCCC reflector.

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The CQ WPX CW contest was held the last weekend of May, just before publication of the June edition of SCCCORE. Despite being at the bottom of the sunspot cycle, 20 meters had a good opening to Europe for several hours on Friday evening, and 10 opened up briefly during the weekend. 15 had openings both days, albeit nothing like what we will see in a few years, but hey, we'll take it!

Paul, WN6K said conditions to South America did not seem to be pop-ins from EU (not sure what he meant by that) and reported that the A index seemed to be goofy.

Dave, N6AN ran 5 watts to a 44 ft CAT5 twisted pair inverted vee with apex at 19 feet on a 1st floor apartment patio just 8 ft from the building! Nothing like being determined! Still, he managed 24 QSOs with this set up!

Frank, WA6KHK did not catch many DX openings but knocked out 916 QSOs!

Marko, N5ZO operated club station NT6Q. He had some challenges, shall we say, with time on and time off, and had to make some adjustments. He reported a great opening to deep Europe Friday night.

Axel, KI6RRN did a remote operation using the WA6TQT super station and used the NO6T call sign. He ran off 3,709 QSOs and a score of 8M + points! Holy smokes!

Steve, AC6T had a good opening to Asia on 80 and 40 on Sunday morning but said that EU stations were very weak to his QTH.

Bruce, WA7BNM said that he never heard Japan and only a few South American and Caribbean stations. He too reported a good opening to Europe Friday night.

Eric, NC6K had planned to be at KL7RA for another M/M effort but that was nixed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. He reported that conditions at home seemed decent but not great on 20. He found reasonable propagation on 15 and managed a few Q's on 10.

Dan, N6MJ was again at N6WIN in AZ using the ND7K call (and his score goes to the Arizona Outlaws Contest Club as requested by station owner Tim). Dan reported on numerous additional station and antenna improvements at Tim's station, and that Hector, XE2K has been busy helping Tim with antenna work. Dan reported some equipment issues during the contest but he was able to overcome or create work arounds. His full writeup can be found on 3830scores.com.

Ken, K6LA used the WK6LA call sign but said that it's a lot more fun operating from his PEI station. He is going to work hard on remoting VY2TT!

Bill, W6QU again operated as W8QZA and was QRP as always. He commented how strange it was to have so few Caribbean stations on. He too caught the good Friday night EU opening on 20. He said, "Some of the best thrills of these contests come from "winning" little battles to get a good Q in the log. There is nothing like it and it is hard to explain to a non-ham. But that is sure what keeps me going at 80 yrs old through 4 hours of sleep the first night and 4 1/2 hours the second. These kind of thrills don't show up in the score but they sure make great memories!"

Dana, K6NR felt conditions were terrific given the current stage of the solar cycle. He said 20 was open later than he stayed up, and 40 was good to Europe on Saturday. He also caught an opening to Europe on 15 on Sunday! And he caught the 10 meter opening. He recorded 1,227 Q's in just 22 hours!

Jim, K6ZH operating as KG7NV also found 20 fruitful to EU Friday night, with the Russians especially strong. He also experienced a big 15 meter opening and a short one on 10 on Sunday.

Don, NK6A enjoyed the 20m opening to EU Friday night and again on Sunday. He did not work a single JA (nor did I, although I missed the early 40m window to JA both mornings-NE6I).

Steve, AC6T often operates the UCSB club station but ran the contest from home this time. Europe was very weak for him but he had a good opening to Asia on 80 and 40 meters Sunday morning.

Dick, W6TK found 20m still open at midnight over the pole! 40 was good Saturday night and not particularly noisy. He was happy to see 15 open up but missed out on the best of the 10m openings. Drew, N7DA did almost exclusivly 40 meters using a 26 ft vertical with a cap hat.

Wyatt, AI6V was part of the 9A1TT crew again, operating remote to Croatia using the call sign 9A0AA. They operated M/S using 7 operators from 6 different countries. He enjoyed working us SoCal guys from the other side of the world.

Terry, N6IC had a goal of working at least 10 stations on each band, and only fell short on 160 meters.

Dennis, NE6I knew going in that condx would be stinky but it was going to be a quiet stay-at-home weekend, except for grocery shopping with the XYL for them and his elderly mom. Plus he wanted to do a second contest run-through with the new FTDX-101MP obtained a few months earlier. The antennas were giving him some SWR issues Friday night and Saturday while running high power but seemed fine Sunday running low power. He will check on what's going on in coming weeks. He enjoyed the 15 meter openings both days. The band was quiet and stations were easily workable, even barefoot. 20 was crowded and the 101's filtering did not disappoint! 50 Hz BW with no ringing? Crazy! One mistake he realized later was not leveraging the second receiver to monitor for 10m openings. Next time!

Scott, N6MI operated at Frazier Peak from his ham van. He was running his first contest with his new 101D. He too reported great performance from the receiver. Glenn, K6NA was using the club call NA6TT and had a lot of fun, scoring 1302 Q's and 1.9M points. He found conditions surprisingly good and caught a nice 10 meter opening on Sunday.

Dick, N6AA reported having bad power line noise and made most of his QSOs using a tri-bander only 6 feet high that looks under the power lines. He left on a trip Sunday morning and missed operating that day. Yet he still managed 1,350 Q's for 1.5M points!

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The ARRL June VHF Contest was held mid-month. There were a lot of pre-contest announcements by SCCCers on the club reflector announcing operating plans during the weekend. The Magic Band (6 meters) had had some healthy openings here and there leading up to the contest weekend, so I think we all had high hopes for a spectacular contest. And it was. Out east! Here in California, we were mostly shut out of any kind of really huge Sporadic E openings on 6 (although it was depressing to me to look at where XE2CQ in TJ was being copied (using PSKReporter). For example, 00Z Monday (5pm local), his CQs were being copied by VE9GJ in the PEI area and WA1EAZ in Massachusetts, and all over the Great Lakes Region. NA6L was similarly copied in the northeast at that time as was NC6K and K6RO. Yours truly had only a brief opening to Texas Saturday afternoon and managed to QSO two of the guys out there. Never-the-less, I had a good time and found having the second receiver on the 101MP was quite handy! I was monitoring 50.313 on the main receiver and 50.125 on the sub receiver all weekend, occasionally snagging an SSB Q on .125. I also used the sub receiver to tune the CW and the rest of the Phone portion of 6 periodically. As an aside, I normally forget to monitor 2 meters during these contests (I only have an FM rig on 2) but had it on 146.52 Saturday and .55 on Sunday. I did log one FM QSO despite my handicapped ground plane situation. I've not figured out how to interface the N1MM+ contest logger to WSJT-X, so I used N3FJP's VHF contest logger instead and manually entered the Q's as I worked them. N3FJP's logging software can be interfaced to WSJT-X using JT-Alert but I didn't have time this go round to tackle it. Maybe next time. If anyone has figured out the N1MM+ / WSJT-X interface, email me offline. Tim, N6GP operated limited rover and recorded a personal best for number of QSOs on 6, 2 and 440 MHz. Footnote, rather incredibly, 6 magically opened up from SoCal just as the contest was ending and continued on for the next hour or two. Crazy.

Some comments from participants: Larry, K6RO: "I really never intended to do this contest for 18 hours, but when N6GP sent out an email to our club reminding us to get on, I said..what the heck. No preparation, but jumped in on 6m FT8 to start..then to 6m ssb...had a nice run there, and back to ft8. When I was on ssb, many guys asked me for 2m and 440...I said I didn't have those bands. But on Sunday, I grabbed my 2m/440 mobile rig,and started to make q's there...only had FM, but that was better than nothing. I spent Sunday rotating between 6m ft8, ssb, and asking everyone to move to my FM bands. Was kinda fun ..2 different radios on separate benches..2 logging programs..that was a mess.. Anyway..I had a great time playing radio. I only took one 3 hour tennis break on Sunday morning, and quit the contest 1 hour early to take Sharon out to dinner...our first sit down dinner in over 2 months. I think I have a good location for VHF contests, and now I am thinking of getting an IC9700 so I can do fm and ssb in the next one. Any other radios that are better ? or have 6m also ? Probably will need a dual band 2m/440 yagi also. I ran about 600 watts on 6m..not sure if I needed that, or if 100 watts would have brought the same results. I found out after the contest that the 3 band category is only low power..so I need to think about this before September. Thanks to Bruce WA7BNM for merging my 2 logs, and a few other guys that helped me with other things. I hope to do this contest in September...will the conditions be the same ? or typically better ? I hope better as my 6m grid total was not good. I have not done a VHF contest since 1996,so I have no clue..lots of reading to do before I do this one again. Thanks for the q's. My score may change, as these results were from the ARRL upload site,which didn't take out any dupes."

Drew, N7DA: "No 6 meter, so really limited. :-) WA5VJB cheap yagis and drive on-mast. HT and a ground plane. Roved local hilltops in DM12 and DM13. Ran out to Laguna, also in DM12 Sunday AM to work a bunch over in Arizona which was a lot of fun. FM, SSB, and CW. (The most CW I've ever worked in a VHF contest; crazy considering I wasn't on 6.) No digital, so again, really limited. :-) Paper logging; somehow only had to purge 4 dupes from my log. Worked a lot of SCCCers. Thanks! A number of fairly new callsigns (per current sequential callsigns.) New contesters? Thanks to N6MI for being patient and giving me another mult. Only glitch was discovering late in the contest that my microphone plug could slip partially out of a jack. Explains why sometimes they couldn't hear me on phone! :-) FM was hopping. I mostly used HT whip for FM. Need to get folks organized with more than 2 or 3 simplex frequencies so we can spread out more. It really was that busy at times."

Dana, K6NR: This was my first fairly serious effort in a VHF contest. I had a blast. I operated from our property in Phelan, California. I recently acquired a second AB-577 military mast and set up yagis for 2 meters, 440 and 1.2g at about 45'. I didn't install a rotator so I turned the whole mast from the bottom with the AB-577 wrench. I had three coaxes running down the mast to a switch connecting to the shack. I spent an amount of time running out back to switch antennas or turn the mast. At least I got some exercise. Next time maybe I'll add a rotator and use a triplexer to feed the shack? Don't want to make it too easy. I spent a fair amount of time listening on multiple frequencies, waiting for new stations to show up. I had my IC9700 as the main radio, with my K3 on 6m, and mobile rigs on 220 and 440 fm. Hard to tell which one I was hearing at times, and easy to pick up the wrong microphone. 6m FT8 was helpful to keep up a pace when no one new was on. The modest openings on 6m were nice, but, well, modest. The calling frequencies were a bit over used - folks would get on from mountain tops or strong base stations and make it hard for others to come on and announce and get off. I am too used to HF contesting where there is liberal use of VFOs. Greatest fun was working some distant stations on 2 meters. I worked a number of San Francisco area stations on FT8, as well as a few in Nevada and parts east. I wasn't setup for FT8 on the IC9700 but managed to crack that nut during the contest. I also worked K6MYC and his megastation up in DM07. That's about the longest haul for me on 2 meter SSB to date. Also worked K6MWK in DM06. At any rate, it was quite an experience. Thanks everyone for the QSOs, including my first 3 ever on 1.2ghz (W6PNG, N6AX and N6MI)."

Jim, K6ZH reported lousy conditions in SoCal. And great conditions before and after the contest! Levi, K6JO had a great time despite the propagation challenges. It was his first time contesting on 2m and 440 MHz. Marty, N6VI found 6m poor but he worked KD6RMS and N6UTC on all six of the bands he had. Bruce, WA7BNM operated for only the second time in a VHF contest, putting his SteppIR DB-36 to work this time around. Worked a few stations on SSB and CW during the first half hour and then spent the rest of his time on FT8. He was happy to work a couple of XE's and surprised to decode a PY. Eric, NC6K said, "Seriously, this was one of the worst years for Es that I can remember. For some reason, the weekend of this contest always coincides with practically no sustained Sporadic E. We had an opening Saturday evening for about an hour to the PNW and some very in-and-out openings Sunday to the FN grids and Hawaii (lasted less than 10 minutes and no QSOs). To add insult to injury, my friends east of the Continental Divide shared their misery at having to deal with extremely full waterfalls that made it hard to find an open spot. I spent most of the contest watching the Blue Screen of Death, which in this case was the empty waterfall. At least there were a few dozen locals to decode endlessly. I went to the 6 Meter FT4 segment a few times, but there was pretty much nothing there, and I did spend some time on CW, SSB and FM, but there was also very little going on. With conditions like we had, FT4 would probably have been better, but no one seemed to move from the FT8 segment. As Brooklyn Dodger fans used to say, "Wait til next year". I'm sure conditions will be so much better."

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ARRL published the final results of the 2019 ARRL 10 Meter Contest. John, K6AM placed 6th in the USA SOHP, Mixed Mode category. Paul, WN6K finished 3rd USA SOLP, Mixed Mode. Bill, W8QZA operating as W6QU took 2nd USA SOQRP Phone Only.

ARRL has also published the final results of January VHF contest. Of little surprise, Wayne, N6NB took top honors (by leaps and bounds!) in the Classic Rover category, well more than doubling the nearest runner up's score! Greg, W6IT took 6th in the category. Bruce, KG6IYN placed 1st in the SO FM only category. SCCC took top honors in the Medium Club category, edging The Ontario VHF Assocation by a mere 267 points! (387,843 with 18 scores versus 387,576 with 38 scores) What a photo finish!


I mentioned on the reflector last month that I had run across XE2SI on 6 meter FT8 and couldn't resist giving him a call for a quick QSO. Back in the 1980's, the SCCC partnered with him to do some multi-multis in the CQWW DX contests from a hilltop in Tijuana. The crew took tower trailers, antennas, radios, generators and of course all the contest fixin's to stage competitive runs from Mexico. My comment on the reflector conjured up some fond memories by those that participated in those M/M's. CQ Magazine has the results of those on their web site. The XE2SI/SCCC efforts ran up some respectable finishes from the west coast! Check out these stats!



1983 SSB 13,487,670 points, 10,848 QSOs, 162 zones, 380 countries. Ops were XE2SI, AA6RX (now N6AN), K6NA, N6AA, N6AR, N6NB, N6ND (sk), N6TR, N6TJ, N6ZZ (sk) and WA6OTU (now N5OT).
1984 SSB 9,984,236 points, 8,952 QSOs, 143 zones, 350 countries. Ops were AA6RX (now N6AN), K6NA, N6ND (sk), N6NI, NI6W (sk), and WA6OTU (now N5OT).
1983 CW 1,878,600 points, 7,668 QSOs, 142 zones, 308 countries. Ops were AA6RX (now N6AN), AE6E, N6TR, N6VI, N6ZZ (sk), NE6I, WA6OTU (now N5OT).
1986 CW 5,093,276 points, 5,052 QSOs, 141 zones, 298 countries. Ops were XE2SI, AA6RX (now N6AN) and AB6R.

That 1983 SSB effort placed 4th in the world! Read the article in the link telling about the "crazy Americans" in Mexico!
In 1984, a couple of those guys jumped ship and went to TI1C where they won the world on SSB in M/M. The XE2SI guys finished 5th that year.
On CW in 1983, the SCCC team took XE2SI to a close 2nd place world, also recording the highest QSO total! And you might also recognize the top single op all band winner: 9Y4VT operated by Dick, N6AA! Dick broke the SOABHP record that year.
In 1986, Dick, N6AA broke his 1983 SOABHP record operating 9Y4VT with over 5,000 QSOs, besting the '83 score by 1M points! Chip, K7JA was right behind him in 2nd place operating at NP4A. In 5th place was Jim, N6TJ who set a new African record that year from D44BC. The SCCC XE2SI team didn't quite make the Top 5 M/M that year but their 5M points certainly came close. SCCC finished 3rd that year in the Club standings!

Tree, N6TR shared these great photos from the 1983 contests (scroll down near the bottom of the list and then click each picture link).

Wayne, N6NB has these from the 1983 SSB operation.

This picture is the 1984 SSB team. Top: AA6RX (now N6AN) and Kurt, NI6W (sk). Bottom from left: K6NA, N6NI, N6VI, N6ND (sk), and just above N6ND is WA6OTU (now N5OT). Paul, N6LL (not shown) was the photographer of this shot. He recalls that Mark, WA6OTU demanded that everyone stop packing after the contest and pose with the tower trailer for this now classic shot. Thanks, Mark!

Larry, N6NC shared the story about and some pictures of the SCCC team that operated 6E2T in Ensenada and took 1st place Multi-Two! Ops were K6LA, K6LL, N6NC, N6HC, KM6SN and N6KI. Pepe, XE2MX (sk) was instrumental in helping SCCC with that operation. See separate story here on the web site.

CQ Magazine announced late last month that Tim Shoppa, N3QE has been named CQ Contesting Editor, succeeding Dave Sidall, K3ZJ after five years in the position. Dave's increased job responsibilites have limited his available time. Tim is an active contester and served as secretary of the PVRC for several years.

CT1BOH has a nice presentation on 2BSIQ (Two bands, synchronized interleaved operating protocol here. It's a good read. Check it out.

Once again, I have run across something that made me gasp. You might have seen these yourself at Dayton or another convention. A company called Luso Tower out of Japan makes some towers that can support just about anything you could throw at it. The LUSO150 Magnum (see KM8AM page on QRZ.com) can handle 183 square feet of wind load at 57 mph with the tower fully extended to 145 feet tall! Now here in Califoria, we would probably want to derate that a little by using a higher wind speed in our calcs, but you get the idea! And that isn't their tallest tower! They have others! Yikes! Now, these things aren't cheap, so you'll be needing a healthy bank account if you want to bring one home. The 150 Magnum was priced at $68,900 at Dayton in 2015.



Strange but true...
A violin contains about 70 separate pieces of wood!

73 for now,
--Dennis NE6I

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ARRL has announced a pair of temporary rule waivers for the 2020 Field Day event coming up on June 27-28. With the COVID pandemic causing most clubs to forgo their usual in the field operating event this year, there has been much discussion on various forums about how to make this year's event fun and meaningful. The two waivers for this year only are noted below. Full details can be found here.

1) For Field Day 2020 only, Class D stations may work all other Field Day stations, including other Class D stations, for points.
2) In addition, for 2020 only, an aggregate club score will be published, which will be the sum of all individual entries indicating a specific club (similar to the aggregate score totals used in ARRL affiliated club competitions).

CQ has published the final results of the CQWW DX SSB contest. Ken, K6LA piloted his VY2TT station to 8th place in SOAB HP. In the USA standings, Axel, KI6RRN operated as NO6T at the WA6TQT super station to place 4th in SOAB HP. Congratulations on the Top Ten finishes, guys!

The CQWW DX CW results have also been published. Dan, N6MJ operated ZF1A and took 3rd place in the SOAB HP category. Ken, K6LA took VY2TT to 10th place. Jim, N6TJ was at FM5KC and placed 6th in the Classic HP category. Dick N6AA, Art, W6XD and Marty, N6VI were part of the 3B8M M/M effort and placed 8th in that category. In the USA standings, Terry, N6CW placed 3rd HP on 7 MHz. Bill, W8QZA did his thing as W6QU in QRP AB and placed 3rd. And SCCC placed 7th in the Club category. Great job, everyone!

Also published are the final results of the 2020 7QP (7 Land QSO Party). The contest committee reported a record high turnout with 1,150 logs received! Many SCCCers entered the fray as well. In fact, Axel, KI6RRN was operating at WA6TQT using the NO6T call sign and operating all of the state QSO Parties that day. He placed 1st in the Non-7 SO Assisted HP Mixed category! If you are a County Hunter, most QSO Parties really light things up. This year is a little different because the COVID situation is reducing the number of mobiles out there but the Wyoming team captain rallied 22 of 23 counties to be on the air for the contest. Overall, the 7QP put on 192 of the possible 259 counties this year, an amazing feat. I am sorry that I missed this one after reading about all of the excitement! The full writeup can be found here and complete line scores are located here.

Many of our SCCC members attend the Southern California DX Club (SCDXC) Summer Bash held at a prominent SoCal DXer and/or contester's QTH. In fact, there is often an SCCC meeting held at the Bash. As with virtually all other public gatherings of this type, the 2020 edition of the Summer Bash has been canceled. No word on whether a virtual Bash might be held (Zoom, Skype or Facetime anyone?).

While that is sad news, perhaps some good news is that SCCCers are more active than ever in recent contests. Even the smaller contests and QSO Parties are attracting more SCCCers than usual. Let's make the best of this situation and have as much fun as possible on the air! As was pointed out in the SCDXC May bulletin, contesters and DXers are of course not doing any expeditions of late. Everyone will be itching to get out once we get past the current situation. Look for a rise in contest expeditions sometime in the future!

W6HB of the SCDXC suggested some new Q Codes for these times.

QLD: I am locked down.
QUA: I am quarantined.
QPD: I am in the middle of a pandemic.
QTP: I have toilet paper. Want to trade for a new car?
QFC: I am flattening the curve.
QHG: I need a hug.
QSH: I am sheltering in place.
QHS: I have hand sanitizer. Want to trade for two new cars?
QSD: I am observing social distancing.
QCV: I hate Coronavirus.
And I will add this one:
QDW: I have toilet paper. Will trade for disinfecting wipes.

In the April edition of SCCCORE, I talked about Henry Radio and the well respected Henry amplifiers. This month, Barry, N6VOH, who does repairs of the Henry amps, sent along a batch of pictures for our enjoyment. Great stuff. They speak for themselves. Click on each thumbnail to see a full size picture. Henry amplifiers may have been ahead of their time. Can you imagine if Henry was still building amateur radio amps? I can only imagine that they would be incredibly popular with contesters and DXers.





Jeff, W6JK sent along this picture of his station, one that includes a Henry 2K-4 floor model (left side of picture).



The final results of the January North American QSO Party (NAQP) CW have been published. Axel, KI6RRN operating NO6T set a new rate record with 309 QSOs in 60 minutes. He also finished 2nd place overall. Dan, N6MJ operating as (and at) N6WIN took 3rd place. Dan's score went to the Arizona Outlaws who won the Team competition. SCCC #1 finished 4th. The team consisted of NO6T, N6TR, K6LA, AC6T and WN6K. In the multi-two category, N5ZO (ops N5ZO, NC6K and N6NC) took 3rd place.

In the February, 2020 North American Sprint CW, Marko, N5ZO placed 7th. The SCCC team mustered a 13th place finish in this one.

And in the January, 2020 NAQP SSB contest, Dan, N6MJ was at AK7AA and took top honors. His score went to the AOCC Mustangs in this one though. Axel was again operating NO6T and placed 4th. The SCCC #1 team (NO6T, W6AFA, WN6K, W6TK and K6RO) placed 4th in the Team standings.

ARRL published the final 2019 SS Phone results. Levi, K6JO placed 5th in the single op, low power category. Ken, K6LA powered his VY2TT station to 2nd place in the single op, unlimited, high power category. And SCCC finished 2nd in the Medium Club category! Great job, everyone! The writeup can be found be found here and the full results can be found here.

ARRL also has published the final 2019 160 Meter Contest results. SCCC finished 5th in the Medium Club category. The article is here and the line scores are here.

If you missed the live presentation of the 2020 Contest University webinar, you can still view it on YouTube. The webinar is a little over ten hours long and can be viewed at this YouTube URL. the course outline and PDF files can be found here.

Last month I wrote about an update to ARRL's TQSL program. In mid-May, ARRL released another update, version 2.5.4 along with a new configuration file. The new version of TQSL corrects a couple of bugs in the earlier version. To get the update, open TQSL. It should automatically prompt you about installing the update and new config file. If not, click on Help, Check for Updates.

Speaking of ARRL, in case you missed it, ARRL members may now access The National Contest Journal (NCJ) online at no additional charge. NCJ is a fantastic resource for contesters. For example, the recent edition has an article about setting up your macros for RTTY contesting, and an article about the popular-with-hams Rohn towers and wind loading. The printed edition still requires a subscription.

I will have a summary of comments from the CQ WPX CW contest (May 30-31) in the next issue of SCCCORE. Conditions were especially punk here at the bottom of the sunspot cycle, and 10 meters pretty much was non-existent, but there were some amazing scores turned in locally and around the world. Sadly, only three of us were reporting our scores live to the contest scoreboards. I wish that more of you would. For me personally, it's very motivating to keep trying to move up the scoreboard. Try it sometime. You might be surprised.

Strange but true...
There are more than 10 million bricks in the Empire State Building!

73 for now,
--Dennis NE6I

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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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Bruce, WA7BNM reports that the NCCC, sponsor of the California QSO Party, is considering rule changes for 2020 to encourage more expeditions to operate from rare counties by awarding bonus points to club's aggregate scores. Although these are not final, the NCCC is seeking input from clubs regarding the potential changes. Please respond to the reflector or to Bruce (bhorn [at] hornucopia.com) with any feedback or suggestions for other changes. Thanks.

Proposed changes:

1. An expedition that makes at least 100 QSOs in any of the Top 10 rarest counties of CQP 2019, or to any of 25 other counties that were only covered by expeditions or were one station away from being on this Top 10 list: 100,000 bonus points for their club. List of these counties posted on cqp.org.

2. An expedition that makes at least 100 QSOs from any county not covered by #1: 50,000 bonus points for their club.

3. Any operation (does not have to be an expedition) that makes at least 100 QSOs from any of the Top 10 rarest states or Canadian multipliers: 100,000 bonus points for their club.

4. Mobile stations, MCE (Multi-County Expedition), county-line stations and remotely operated stations are also eligible to participate.

5. A club can claim a maximum of 500,000 bonus points. CA clubs and non-CA clubs are eligible for these bonus points.

6. Bonus points are per multiplier, not per callsign. Examples:
a. A club cannot have five expeditions to Trinity County and claim 500,000 bonus points. This would be a 100,000 point bonus.
b. A club can mount an expedition to Sutter County, have another club member rent and operate from the VY2TT lodge in Prince Edward Island, and gain 200,000 bonus points if each station makes at least 100 QSOs.
c. A mobile station that makes at least 100 QSOs in each of five different counties in #1 would contribute 500,000 bonus points to its club.
d. A county line expedition from GLEN/MEND making over 100 QSOs would contribute 200,000 bonus points to its club.
e. An MCE operation from Butte County on Saturday and Lassen County on Sunday, with at least 100 QSOs in each county, would contribute 200,000 bonus points to its club.

7. Bonus points are only added to club totals; individual station scores are unaffected. Bonus points are allocated to clubs in the same way as individual scores: in the case of a Multi-Op expedition where different operators are members of different clubs, the operators may elect to allocate bonus points proportionately across the different clubs.

An excellent CQP analysis write up can be found on pages 7-13 of the March edition of the NCCC Newsletter.

ARRL posted an interesting article about Ted Henry, W6UOU. Ted turned 100 years old on January 25. He is the founder of the original Henry Radio shop in Los Angeles (the first Henry Radio store was opened in 1927 in Missouri by Ted's brother Bob, W0ARA). I remember frequenting the L.A. store on West Olympic Boulevard many, many times, browsing all of the radios on the shelves, new and used. Many SCCCers, indeed many contesters and DXers around the country, owned the Henry 2K amplifier (and/or one of its descendants), a brute of an amp that could take the beating that contesters and DXers dish out. You might be surprised to learn that Henry Radio still makes amplifiers to this day, many of which are aimed at the commercial market. Henry Radio was synonymous with amateur radio for many years. You can see what Henry Radio is up to today as well as read about their history and old amplifiers here.

Bob, NC6Q worked at the Henry Radio Olympic store in the early 1980's, repairing Henry HT's, FMH2's and FMH4's. He worked with the infamous Frank Cuevas, W6AOA. Bob still has his 2m Henry HT purchased brand new, the model S-1! Arnie, N6HC owned the 2KD-5 desktop amplifier from about 1979 through the late 1990's. He ultimately sold it because he wanted an amp capable of the WARC bands and 160 meters. Tree, N6TR has a 2K Classic floor model (and still owes me a picture!). The 2K-3 was the first amp owned by Marty, N6VI. He later obtained a second one as well. He paired them with Drake rigs back in the 1960's and 70's. One was set up to run on 40 and 15 meters and other to run on 80, 20 and 10. This provided him the ability to operate on the two most active bands at the same time. He used a homemade box to switch PTT, key, microphone and headphones. Over the years, he made a couple of interesting modifications to the amps. One time, he added inductance and a customized input can to get the amp to operate on 160 meters for a contest with N6TR in the mountains. Another time, he shorted part of the output coil and added another custom input in order to get it to work on 6 meters. That helped him snag his first and only African contact (C5AEH) on the Magic Band! Jim, W6YA, in an email to NC6Q that he forwarded to me, wrote about his memories of Henry Radio starting about 1954 when he was first licensed. Jim remembers two small rooms on the side with used gear. He especially remembers an HRO50 or HRO60 that he says was the biggest treasure to admire. Jim bought his first 2K and a Drake line in 1969, and he was in heaven. Frank, W6AOA and he used to butt heads on the air (friendly competition) and became well acquainted. Frank later became Jim's dental patient! Around 1972, Jim obtained a 2K-3, a step up from the 2K as it was running 3-500Z tubes rather than 3-400's. He said the amps were very noisy back then, and some of the guys used big power resistors to slow down the fan speed.

Dan, KI6X sent along the pictures above. The 2K-3 was bought about 1970 for use at the Autonetics Radio Club, WB6YPX, and AF MARS AFC6YPX/AFC6RI in Anaheim, CA. The club has since become K6NX. In the 80's the 2K-3 was used for contesting and sometimes They contested under his call to make it easier. Collins gear eventually replaced everything for MARS use. The problem with the 2K-3 beyond some rectifier replacements, and a tube socket, was that the meters are at chair height and the chair bashed into it one too many times (see broken meter on top). The meters are nearly impossible to find or if found priced too high. The meter box on top is an added plug-in meter to use in its place. This amp has become amp #3 and not currently in use. The other amp, the 2K Classic, was from the early 80's and used at the McDonnel Douglas club, W6VLD, in Huntington Beach, CA. It also saw a lot of contesting in the 80's as W6VLD. It is used very lightly as a second amp at a second club station set-up. There are only enough antennas for one station so it gets very little use. These two clubs have since combined in Huntington Beach, CA with Rockwell and McDonnel Douglas Aerospace companies becoming Boeing and then the closing of the Anaheim facility.

Comments from the ARRL DX SSB contest last month:
Bill, N6RV said it was a rough one. Jim, W6KC reported that he worked most of what he could hear, and was happy to work 4U1UN on 40. Marko, N5ZO operated about 24 hours, which was more than he expected. Sunday morning was good into Europe but he already had most of the stations in the log. Nothing much long path that morning. John, K6AM along with Levi, K6JO and Tim, N6WIN operated from ZF1A. 10 meters was a big fat zero. 15, however opened nicely both days. 20 was their money band. Bruce, WA7BNM did his usual SB20 operation, all S&P during the first 24 hours of the contest. He never copied any Asians other than JAs. He heard some eastern Europeans but was unable to work any. Dick, N6AA had his usual power line noise and had to have the K3's noise reduction and blanker on on all bands. Dennis, NE6I had a new Yaesu FTDX-101MP acquired a couple of days earlier. There were a lot of buttons and menus to learn, and some reading of the manual to do! He reports that the receiver is everything it's cracked up to be! He didn't expect the 3D spectrum scope to be any big deal, having not experienced a good spectrum scope in the past, but wow, Yaesu got it right! it's very configurable and quite helpful! Ray, N6HE commented that he seemed to get through quite well despite using just a 25 ft high end-fed antenna. He was thrilled to work KL7 on 160 barefoot with a high SWR. Larry, K6RO once again had tennis matches interrupting contesting, not to mention some other things going on. Saturday's signals were better for him than Sunday. Dan, N6MJ was at the TI7W station. He reported that 10 was a major disappointment, and only logged 27 Q's there. 15 was much better. 40 proved to be "magic" from that station, as he put it. Bob, KF6I used an inverted-L that worked very well for him. He worked all that he could hear. Bill, W6QU operating W8QZA QRP (as usual) said conditions seemed worse than during the CW weekend in February. He did manage 3 Q's on 10 meters. No EU or JA on 15 though. He He managed 3 EU both days on 20, did well into the Caribbean on 40 and worked two JA's on 80. Jim, N6TJ operated from KH6LC and was almost always loud at the QTH of NE6I. And I might mention, he had beautiful audio!

Speaking of the ARRL SSB contest, Randy, K5ZD posted some interesting comments about his operation at V47T. As well, you can listen to audio captures of his contest audio by scrolling down to the rate sheet, select an hour and click on Listen. The links seem to be March 8 but if you want to hear March 7 audio, change the date in the URL.

Did you catch it? The February, 2020 issue of CQ Magazine is the annual QRP issue. In it, SCCC member Bill, W8QZA / W6QU is featured in the article entitled "I'll Get it Done With QRP or it Won't Happen!" We also get to see pictures of his shack and antennas (different from those posted on his QRZ site). Bill is an avid QRPer and regularly turns in amazing contest scores.

Tim, K3LR will be hosting Team Exuberance again this year, this time for WPX CW. The team is made up of a group of young contesters (teens and early 20-somethings) that are making some serious noise in the radiosport world. They took first place in North America in the Multi-Two category last year in WPX SSB. They have a GoFundMe page to help pay the estimated $8,000 needed for airfare, hotel, transportation and meals during the contest. This year's lineup does not currently have any SCCCers.

The September VHF contest results have been posted by ARRL. Wayne, N6NB piloted his rover station to first place in the Classic Rover category with just over 162K points! Wayne has a long history of roving in various VHF contests, and now has at least a division win in each of the past seven decades! Tim, N6GP was also a rover in the contest and placed 5th overall in the Limited Rover category.

The November, 2019 SSB Sprint results are out. Levi, K6JO placed fourth and Marko, N5ZO placed sixth overall. Nicely done, guys. The next edition is April 5 at 00Z.

Also recently published are the preliminary February, 2020 NAQP RTTY results. SCCC #1 appears in 10th place by the slimmest of margins (188 points!). Our entrants were more on the casual side than serious.


On March 24, RSGB announced that it will not accept contest entries from portable, alternative addresses, or multi-op stations in light of Great Britain's recently updated position on people's movements (think COVID-19). They are also not enouraging travel to island locations for the July IOTA contest. More on the subject can be found here. Will other organizations and contest committees follow suit? These are trying times for all of us. Be safe! COVID-19 is serious stuff! Practice your social distancing at all times!

Cartoon used with permission of renowned disc jockey Bobby Ocean! Bobby's resume includes runs at legendary stations like KGB, KCBQ, KHJ, KFRC, KYNO and KWST.



Strange but true...
Most lipstick contains fish scales!

73 for now,
--Dennis NE6I

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Did you know that you can support your favorite charity while making purchases on Amazon? And yes, there are some amateur radio related charities participating in this FB program. For example, I linked mine to INDEXA, the International DX Association. It's not a huge percentage that Amazon donates to your charity (0.5% of eligible purchases) but hey, every little bit counts! If you're already an Amazon shopper, why not? It doesn't add any cost to your purchases. Once signed up and linked, you will use smile.amazon.com rather than just amazon.com to make your purchases. So be sure to update your shortcut and/or bookmark! You do not change your Amazon account; simply your bookmark/shortcut. Here is their About page. No, SCCC is not a registered 501(c)(3) organization, so we are not eligible for this program. Perhaps in the future. NCCC is and does participate in this program, as do some other worthy amateur radio orgs. Even if you would prefer to donate to a non-amateur radio organization, I do encourage you to sign up. Your favorite organization will appreciate it and as I said, every little bit counts.

Preliminary results of the January NAQP CW contest have been published by NCJ. Looky there! SCCC members are currently positioned 2nd and 3rd! Axel, KI6RRN operating as NO6T is second and Dan, N6MJ over in Arizona at N6WIN's new super station shows in 3rd place! Note, Dan's score, fairly enough, is credited to the Arizona Outlaw Bandits, a group that has helped Tim stand up his new AZ station. Along with Axel, Tree, N6TR, Ken, K6LA, Steve, AC6T and Paul, WN6K drove the SCCC #1 team to what currently stands as a 4th place finish. Those Arizona Outlaw Bandits ran away with the top team honors but 2nd through 5th place were quite a shootout, with only about 10% of the points separating those teams in a one million point plus battle! Congratulations on a very fine showing! See more on the preliminary January, 2020 results here.

NCJ has also published the preliminary results of the February North American Sprint CW. Those can be found here.

The 2019 FT Roundup results have been published on the RTTY Contesting web site. Levi, K6JO using the call K8O placed 5th overall. The article also has some interesting comments about NIL and QSO rates. The write up can be found be found here.

The ARRL DX contests are of course USA working the world, and the world working the USA. These contests rank near the top based on overall participants. Apparently 10m was open from somewhere to somewhere else because your editor heard a few DX stations moving contacts from 15 to 10 on Sunday afternoon. Hmmm. Here are some comments from SCCCers after the February CW contest:

Jim, W6KC woke up early on Sunday and jumped on about 1400Z. He found 80 and 40 great into Asia and 20 good into Europe. Even without giant antennas! Paul, WN6K found 74 DXCC entities, and felt that was a bit of an improvement over the recent past. Axel, KI6RRN used the NO6T call and operated at the super station of WA6TQT again, registering an incredible score from the west coast. Frank, WA6KHK commented that he found 10m to be dead as usual. Dennis, NE6I had a little time Sunday afternoon and was pleasantly surprised to find 15 open. He saw some of the 10 meter spots but never heard anything there. Ed, AI6O reported that 40m was the best he had heard in many years on Friday night. 20 was poor on Saturday. Dick, W6TK found conditions very good Friday night and he may have worked the most ever Europeans on 80. He said that conditions on 160 - 40 were quiet and signals were good. Saturday night was noisier. He worked the SoCal guys at ZF1A on 5 of 6 bands, missing them only on 10m. Ken, K6LA operated his VY2TT station. He reported just so-so conditions. 15 opened to EU a bit both days and 10 opened Sunday to the south of him. David, N6AN operated from a grassy area with trees on the Caltech University campus on Saturday morning and then on Sunday, along the L.A. River concrete channel in Studio City. He used a half square hung in the trees on Saturday and a wire vertical with two elevated radials on Sunday. He ran just 5 watts from a KX3. It's all about having fun! John, K6AM did the writeup for ZF1A, the MS operation from Grand Cayman. John said that the station played well and was in great shape. The bands were about the same as in 2019. No 10m opening Saturday but 15 opened at 1830Z, providing about 50 mults. Sunday, 15 was open all day and 10m opened for about 8 hours. 160 was quiet and very productive. Steve, K0XP slugged it out single band on 160. He found the going tough. Marko ran the NT6Q club call. He found 20m and below surprisingly good, with 20 particularly productive into Europe both mornings. He had the contest online scoreboard up and it motivated him to keep pushing. He and KG5HVO (operating as KD5DD) were in a horse race, and this kept Marko from leaving the chair. Some of the club guys were doing multi-op efforts. Wyatt, AI6V and a crew of Europeans turned in 1M+ points from 9A1TT. Wyatt joined the crew remotely from his bedroom! John, K6AM, Dan, N6MJ and Tim, N6WIN along with W9KKN piloted ZF1A to a 6M+ score. John reported that the station was in great shape, and the bands behaved well enough. Chas, W6UM concentrated on the low bands. He said that Friday was good but Saturday was forgettable. Terry, N6CW added new dipoles for 80 and 20 to his already existing dipole for 160, and raised them from 20 ft to 35 ft. high. These improved the S/N considerably over this AV-640 vertical, allowing him to double his 20m score. Bill, W8QZA did his usual QRP operation using the W6QU call. He worked his first ever BY station on 80, and then added VR2 later, an entity that is very challenging for him. Over on 40, he worked JT1CO for his first JT via QRP on that band! Overall, he managed 67 DXCCs and 23 zones, all with five watts! Steve K6AW operated N6RO remotely single band 40 and reported conditions were quite good. Bruce, WA7BNM noted that Saturday morning was mostly northern Europe from his location. Dana, K6NR enjoyed the 80m conditions, especially on Friday night. Europe was strong and had no trouble copying him. 20 and 40 were also good for him. Glenn, K6NA considered the conditions to be outstanding. And he actually managed two Q's on 10m! Naturally, the main load was carried by 20-80 meters. Kurt, W6PH operated VP9I for the 21st time in this contest. He didn' push himself as hard this time but still racked up 3.6M points (for the Bermuda Contest Club). Interestingly, his 160m QSO total was higher than 15m. He did manage 84 Q's on 10m.

Here are some pictures from the contest. Click the thumbnails for a larger view.

David, N6AN:
"I spent an hour or two Sunday midday operating next to the concrete channeled LA river in Studio City. KX3 at 5 watts and an experimental computer ribbon cable 30-6 meter vertical that required the tuner to make a match anywhere. The antenna was taped to a 30' fiber glass SpiderBeam pole poked through tree branches. No guys needed. After a while I put up a single band 20 meter vertical which seemed to radiate better. Saturday morning I was on the Caltech campus with a similar setup, though I put up a 20 meter half square instead of the vertical. The other support I use is a BnM BW6 20' collapsible fishing pole."



Steve, K0XP:
"K0XP at the paddle. The radio, bottom-right, is a TS-890S, just acquired the week before the contest. Above it are a homebrew audio filter w/ keyer & a WinKeyer USB to interface the laptop to the radio (left over from the previous FT-991A setup). On the next higher shelf is a Heath SA-2060A, used presently for 80 & up. This will soon be relegated to 80m only, a modified Murch UT-2000A being used for 40m & up. The tuner in the top center is homebrew, bought on eBay and modified to tune the wire antenna. The roller inductor gets so hot when running stations or calling in a pileup on 160m that a small muffin fan blows on the inductor to keep it cool (just visible to the right). A TS-680S, previously the primary radio 12 yrs ago while living on the east coast, is to the top-left. The antenna feedpoint is at the extreme upper left of this photo, just outside the window in the center of the window frame."


K0XP's antler antenna"
"The feedpoint of the 49-foot sloping wire antenna can easily be seen in the center-left, and a 49-foot (15 meter) sky-blue wire is barely discernable sloping up into the pine tree in the upper-left quadrant of the photo. The feedpoint is right outside the station window, approximately 4 feet from the TS-890S, and is undoubtedly the reason why the Samsung monitor previously used turns itself on and off with keying. The window frame makes a good ground; but a 200-foot-long ornamental-iron fence beyond the "backyard", belonging to the HOA, just 15 feet to the right from the window, is also used as an auxiliary ground by connection with a clip lead (after dark)."




Most of NX6T's scores are provided to the San Diego Contest Club but the operation often includes SCCC members.
Ron, WQ6X provides the narrative:
"While most of the NX6T operation was done remotely, we DID have one operator with actual B-i-C (Butt-in-Chair); namely: WM6Y, running 20 meters on STN-2 while looking for 15 meter signals on STN-1."






Ron remoted into NX6T from Alameda.




I'm sure that like me, many of you have been chasing the VP8PJ South Orkney operation on the bands (late Feb/early March), either as an ATNO or for band slots. (The entity is #19 on ClubLog's Most Wanted List.) I got a kick out of something they said on their February 25 update. "One of the ship's crew asked, 'they make a contact on the radio and need the internet to confirm they made a contact?'" He was referring to VP8PJ's realtime logging using satellite internet. I found this comment humorous but not unusual for a non-ham.

The WSJT-X team published some results of their analysis of NILs in recent FT4/FT8 contests. This may or may not be news to you but is interesting reading. As we all know, these modes are very, very new to the contesting world, and there are bound to be some growing pains. I'm sure we will all work through these together over time. From Joe, K1JT:
"Log checking for several recent contests that used the FT4 and FT8 modes has shown undesirably large numbers of claimed QSOs that receive not-in-log ("NIL") status from the other station. The WSJT development team has worked together with contest sponsors and log checkers to analyze the probable causes of these NILs. Our findings and some operating advice for future contests are posted here, and will also appear in the May-June 2020 issue of NCJ, the National Contest Journal."
73 from the authors of the study:
Steve Franke, K9AN
Don Hill, AA5AU
Ed Muns, W0YK
Iztok Saje S52D
Joe Taylor, K1JT

Strange but true...
Skepticisms is the longest word that alternates hands when typing.

73 for now,
--Dennis NE6I

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The Radio Amateurs of Canada (RAC) announced on New Year's Day the addition of a new section, the Prince Edward Island Section. In addition, it was announced that the border between the Ontario South Section and the Ontario GTA Section has moved. These changes take effect on April 1, 2020 (no, this is not an early April Fool's joke). Thus, certain ARRL contests will now have 84 multipliers rather than 83 (U.S. states and Canadian provinces). More info here and here. Note that your contest software will need to be updated once the author of said software makes the change.

ARRL has announced the availability of a new DVD that includes all 2019 issues of QST, QEX and of particular interest to us contesters, NCJ (The National Contest Journal). The DVD includes all text, photos and source code for project software. The DVD is for 2019 publications only. Wouldn't it be nice to have a new version will all NCJs from Issue 1 to now (hint, hint)? Maybe some day. More on the current offering can be found here.

The January ARRL NAQP CW contest, hopefully the last or second to last of Cycle 24, had us mostly crammed into 80-20 meters. 15 was open a short time in the afternoon but not heartily, and everyone quickly moved down to 20 after working out 15. If you have a modern rig, one built in the past five years or so let's say, you no doubt are really appreciating it about now. Essentially, we're no longer able to spread our CW CQs above about .070 on the bands because the Digital Modes now reside there, and they are quite popular. FB on them having a slice of spectrum to have fun while we do our thing contesting. We need to all remain very active these days while the 5G companies (and others, including the FCC) are looking for spectrum to grow their businesses. They are not likely looking for spectrum in the HF bands but there may be others hiding under the rocks wanting our freqs. Those with more modern rigs are no doubt enjoying all of the modern features in the receivers, allowing them to pick out signals in the often crowded lower three bands (80, 40, and 20). Improved IF shift, IF width, contours, notches, APFs, incredible dynamic range and 3rd order intercepts, and all of the other things on SDRs and SDR hybrid radios. Mostly gone are the days of needing a 300 Hz CW filter to pick out the signals in crowded conditions. We can now tweak a few knobs quickly and pick out stations in crowded and/or noisy conditions. Gosh, for those of us that been at this for several decades, can you remember back before this time when we had things like Heathkits, Swans, Collins, Signal Ones, and yes, even Drake twins?! We've come a long way, baby!

Here are some commments from the January NAQP CW:
Marko, N5ZO hosted Larry, N6NC and Eric, NC6K, and did an M2 operation, their first from the station in the January event. A great start on 15 and 20 had them way out in front on the live contest scoreboard. The east coast, as expected, ran past them once 40m opened up. John, W6JBR was trying to crack 100 Q's but didn't quite get enough BIC time in. Dan, N6MJ operated from N6WIN's new station in Phoenix. The team there has been working hard on the new QTH and it played well. 282 Q's in the first hour! This station is going to be a major force from the Southwest in coming years! Bob, KF6I put in one of his more serious efforts in recent times, and was rewarded with 323 Q's. Axel, KI6RRN operated NO6T to a 308 QSO first hour and has a 310 60 minute best in the contest! Dana, K6NR reported good conditions and was happy to catch the 15m opening. Paul, WN6K reported somewhat better conditions but experienced noise on 40 from the storms in the Appalachia Mountains. Vlad, KM6Z also reported noise. Bruce, WA7BNM was only on for a short time at the start and end of the contest. Dave, W6ZL reported a lot of QSB, especially on 40m. Dennis, NE6I noticed the same on 40. Jim, W6KC made his first ever QSOs on 160. Ed, AI6O found conditions to be very good on 40-15. In fact, he had what he called a hot run on 15. He reported 80 being noisy. Barry, N6VOH worked the contest while also repairing an amplifier. Vic, KI6VC used the contest to improve his CW skills, and reported that it really helped. Dick, W6TK had a lot of fun the first couple of hours but had only limited time to operate. Like others, he enjoyed the 15m opening. Tim, N6GP used "YYZ" as his name, a tribute to the recently passed away drummer of the rock band "Rush." The band heard the Toronto Airport code YYZ on a navigation beacon on a flight returning home. They liked the rhythm of it, and wrote an instrumental song incorporating the CW at the beginning of the song. As one might expect, Tim did receive a lot of rquests for repeats. As an aside, he upgraded his shack PC from Win7 to Win10 on Friday and did not experience any issues with the rig or interfaces. Whew! Steve, AC6T cracked that the new sunspot must have helped 15m! On the other hand, the low bands were noisy for him. Bob, NC6Q created a term alternative to S&P. He called it S&C, Scrape and Claw. For him, the middle of the afternoon was full of high noise and weak signals. 20m died on him between 4 and 4:30. And a grayline boost did not come. He also qualified for the (fictitious) Worked All SCCC Teams award.

The executive summary of the NAQP SSB, which was the weekend after the CW event, is that conditions were very poor. Participants reported relatively brief runs Saturday afternoon, and that it was pretty much a slog after that. The ARRL VHF January contest was the same weekend, and conditions there were poor as well. Even the big guns on the west coast were barely able to crack open the Sporadic-E nut.

The California QSO Party (CQP) results are out. Congrats to Ken who finished 2nd SOHP. George, W6AYC took top honors in SOLP with Eric, NC6K in 2nd. 3rd in the category was Levi, K6JO. Frank, WA6KHK finished 1st in SO(A)QRP. And ahem, with no other entries in the category, SCCC took top honors in the Medium California Club arena. The Mother Lode DX/Contest Club won in the Large California Club category with just 237k points more than us. Let's drum up a little more participation in 2020 and win that one. Full results can be found here.

NCJ published several official contest results in their Jan/Feb 2020 issue. Let's take a look.

The January 2019 NAQP QSO Party CW is first up. SCCC took the top two spots overall! Marko, N5ZO took second and Axel, KI6RRN operating NO6T finshed 3rd overall. Congrats guys on a super finish! The SCCC #1 team, which of course included Marko and Axel, finished second in the team competition, a mere four percentage points behind the Arizona Outlaws - Bad Boys team. N2IC on that team turned in a super human effort that powered the Outlaws to the top spot.

In the NAQP CW August 2019 contest, conditions were not smiling on us, and we had no top ten finishers. Our SCCC #1 team finished 13th.

And then in the August NAQP SSB contest, Levi, K6JO piloted NT6Q to a 9th place finish. Our SCCC #1 team placed 3rd.

Lastly, in the NAQP RTTY July event, we didn't have any top ten finishers but SCCC #1 placed 10th. Not a bad showing because fall conditions are not sweet for us west coasters.

Joe, W6AYC has some interesting articles on his web site. He recently posted on our reflector a blurb about a 2 element 160 meter receive array. How cool is that? He also has a number of other interesting articles there so be sure to check them out.

Speaking of which, we are happy to list SCCC member web sites so let us know if yours isn't listed. Those with broken links were removed in January. Click on "Member Links" on our top menu.

The ARRL has released a new book, Amateur Radio Contesting for Beginners written by Doug Grant, K1DG. The book is said to describe equipment needed for contesting, typical contest formats, operating techniques and more. This might make a great gift or suggestion to hams you know that are interested in the great sport of radio contesting. The book is also available on Amazon Kindle for just $8.99.

For VHF contesters and aficionados, the ARRL VHF contests (January and June) provide opportunities to work a lot of stations. Activity is way up compared to normal, and we often experience Sporadic-E conditions, especially in June. One Southern California operator has been VHF contesting for a long, long, LONG time. Wayne, N6NB is well known in the VHF, UHF and microwave circles. His rover activities in these contests are legendary, and caused more than one rule change by contest officials. Wayne now has 63 years of amateur radio under his belt, and says that if his score holds up in the latest contest in January, he will have "won at least an ARRL division-leader certificate in a VHF contest in seven decades." It all started back in the 1960s. Crazy. Wayne did a write up about his VHF contesting in the November, 2018 SCCCORE. At the time, he stated that his roving days were winding down. You can find the writeup on the web site here under Past Feature Stories. He did say "winding down" though, not "over." And this past January, he was back at it and turned in a 293K+ score (before log checking)! He posted a great write up about it on 3830Scores.org, and you can read it here.

The WRTC 2022 qualification standings were updated last month. A half dozen contest scores were added to the standings. Axel, KI6RRN is currently on top and the only USA operator in the top ten (as of Feb 1). Way to go, Axel! More info can be found here.

Going to Dayton this year? The 2020 Contest University course outline has been posted along with the calls of the instructors. There will be some awfully good courses in there, so be sure to get a seat if you can. See the CTU web site for the course outline webpage. Additional details along with the Registration page are also on the web site.

A team of contesters has put together The State QSO Party Challenge, a year long event to stimulate participation in those contests. Sounds like a fun one!

Strange but true...
One car out of every 230 made was stolen in 2017.

73 for now,
--Dennis NE6I

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The ARRL 160 meter CW contest drew out several SCCCers. Volodymyr, KM6Z had 103 Q's with only a vertical on the balcony! Ed, AI6O was visited by Murphy. Friday night his unun and end fed antenna gave him fits, and his Palstar tuner failed. On Saturday night, his Alpha amp went belly up. It just wasn't his weekend. John, K6MI was only able to put in an hour but had a great time. Bob, KF6I installed a BOG antenna but found it had a slightly higher S/N than his inverted L. He found that the band really opened up after midnight both nights. Steve, K0XP was also visited by Murphy, burning up his tuner while running only 100 watts. He nominated C6AGU for the "Best Ears" award. Steve used a 49 foot tree wire (as he described it) and reported that it worked pretty well. Marko, N5ZO reported that signal levels were mostly low but so was the noise level. He didn't work much DX but recorded 278 Q's in just over four hours of operation. John, W6JBR also reported experiencing very low noise levels. He found band conditions to be very good and with no QSB. He ran a 31 ft ground mounted vertical fed with a 9:1 unun. Eric, NC6K reported that conditions were as good as he can ever remember on 160. He had low noise levels and Friday night propagation in all directions. He lamented not hearing most of Asia and only a few JAs, UAs and a JT (was that JT1CO? --editor). Central and South America were also rarely heard. Steve, K6AW (using the W6AX call at the W6RFU station in Santa Barbara) reported very noisy conditions. Dana, K6NR reported great conditions and worked more DX than in any previous edition of this contest as far as memory serves. He worked 22 countries! Paul, N6LL had terrible QRN on his now slightly higher meandering dipole but fortunately the noise dropped in level late iln the evenings. He slugged it out with only 5 watts in the QRP category! A glutton for punishment, he is!

What was the 10 meter band doing open three hours after sunset in California on Friday night (Dec 13)? Who knows but despite SFI of 69, A of 4 and K of 0 and at the bottom of the sunspot cycle, the ARRL 10 meter contest brought stations out in force. At least on Friday night. And the band was open north and south as well as out to Texas from here in Southern Cal. This appeared to be a Sporadic-E opening, and the band seemed to be open even more intensely in the southeast part of the country. I noticed that the 6 meter operators were also doing some spotting, so it's possible the Sp-E extended to 50 MHz as well. Unfortunately, Saturday was a much different story. Spots were much thinner. Some of the big guns reported a few Q's into South America as well as some short-skip Q's to the east of us. And that was about it for Saturday! Sunday was similarly poor. Very weak openings all day. Bruce, WA7BNM was surpised by the activity on Friday night. Eric, NC6K concurred, stating "Friday evening: Wow, this contest might even be fun! Rest of contest: ZZZZZZZ." Don, NK6A lamented, "Conditions, conditions, conditions." Similar reporting from Mike, KX6A. Friday started off nicely but the band was mostly dead Saturday and Sunday. Same for Paul, WN6K. Most of his Q's were on Friday night with only a few more on Saturday and Sunday. Bob, KF6I had good runs on Friday, working into the Great Lakes states and Texas but finding little or nothing the next two days. Dick, W6TK reported the same as the rest of us. 95 Q's in the first 100 minutes and only 4 Q's the rest of the weekend. Larry, K6RO played off and on between tennis, watching football and filling out QSL cards. Steve, K0XP worked pretty much everything he heard. He observed some of the guys turning up the CW speed trying to catch the meteors (and there did seem to be quite a few both mornings). Bill, W8QZA operated SSB QRP and he too reported that the best conditions were the first few hours of the contest. Dana, K6NR found the band open Friday night to the northwest and east. Saturday and Sunday were slow but he managed to log a few South Americans. He noticed some stations would pop up out of the noise for a few milliseconds. Tim, N6GP missed the first hour but caught the SpE opening. He worked all states in the 7th District, a first for him in this contest.

The raw (unchecked) scores for CQWW CW have been published here. Dan, N6MJ piloted ZF1A to what is currently showing as 3rd place SOHP All Bands with 16M+ points, trailing only D4C and TI7W. Ken, K6LA appears 10th in the category from his VY2TT station. Jim, N6TJ operating FM5KC shows as 6th in the Classic HP category. N6AA and N6VI were at 3B8M where they and the team currently show as 9th in the MM category. Marko was with a group at 6V7A doing M2 and are in 2nd by a hair. Kurt, W6PH and the M/S team at VP9I have 2nd place by a slim margin as well. Stay tuned for publication of the final results!

NOAA and NASA currently agree with each other that solar cycle 25 will peak in July, 2025 (+/- 9 months) with a smoothed sunspot number of 115, not great but better than today, huh? They also agree that cycle 24's minimum will occur in April, 2020 (+/- 6 months). If the prediction for the minimum proves to be true, it will make this cycle the seventh longest on record at 11.4 years. It seems a lot longer, doesn't it? There is some good news related to the potential of another "Maunder-type minimum" in their observations. More about this can be found here. Also, two new sunspots were reported on December 24, and appear to belong to Cycle 25. News of this appeared on the ARRL web site.

Are any of you headed out on ContestExpeditions for ARRL DX or the CQ WPX contests in 2020? Let me know so that I can share the info here.

Strange but true...
When glass breaks, the cracks move faster than 3,000 miles per hour. To photograph the event, a camera must shoot at a millionth of a second!

73 for now,
--Dennis NE6I

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