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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