CQ World Wide DX Contest
Thanks to the following for sponsoring award plaques.
CQWW SSB
EUROPE – Multi-Operator Single-Transmitter Low Power (new category)
EA Contest Club
Association of SE Asian Nations – ASEAN (XZ HS XW XU 3W 9M 9V V85 YB DU) – Multi 2 (new)
Champ C. Muangamphun, E21EIC – SIAM DX GROUP
CQWW CW
WORLD – Multi-Operator Single-Transmitter Low Power
EA Contest Club
Association of SE Asian Nations – ASEAN (XZ HS XW XU 3W 9M 9V V85 YB DU) – Multi 2 (new)
Champ C. Muangamphun, E21EIC – SIAM DX GROUP
We have had some questions about the new rule on recording the contest.
Here is the complete text of the new rule :
“XII.C. Audio Recordings: Any single operator entrant (see V.A.1) competing for a top three finish at the (a) World, (b) Continent , or (c) USA levels, must record the transmitted and received audio as heard by the operator for the duration of the contest operation.
The recording must be in a common format (e.g., mp3) and should include the audio to each ear as a separate channel.
The recording may be requested by the Committee within 90 days after the log deadline to help adjudicate the log.
The recording files must be provided by the entrant within 5 days of the request.
If no recording is made available, the Committee may reclassify or disqualify the entry. “
Key takeaways:
Comment:
The intent of the rule is to help the Committee check out suspicious tuning patterns for guys claiming UNASSISTED. It is hard (but possible) to determine if someone is poaching cluster spots from their Cabrillo file, but really easy when you have the recording.
Q: Where do I submit my recording files?
A: There is no need to submit any recordings unless requested by the Committee. Please keep the files in a safe place until after the results are announced (March the following year).
The 2015 CQ WW Survey is now closed. We had originally announced that it would be open until October 10, but we were not receiving many new responses and wanted to save the cost of paying for another month for the survey tool. Apologies to those that did not get to take the survey. Experience shows that once we get past several thousand responses, the response percentages do not change much.
Thanks to the 5174 of you that took the survey. We are working on analyzing the results and will present them here in the blog over the coming weeks.
The CQ WW Contest Committee has been working hard in the background to be prepared for the 2015 contests. We hope you are too.
With the help of Tzetzo LZ2FQ, we have been working to redesign the logcheck web page. This page allows you to upload your log, check it for proper formatting, and then submit to the robot. We are trying to make the page easier to use and to provide more guidance when we find an error. We urge everyone to submit their log using the web rather than email. Feel free to try it out with your 2014 log and let us know if you find a problem.
Over the past few days, Dave KM3T has been in a data center in northern California working to install a new server for the CQ web sites and log checking. The 8+ year old server we had been using wasn’t keeping up with the increase in logs. We worked around the problem by doing log checking using a virtual server in the Amazon EC2 environment, but all of the file transfers were sometimes unreliable. The new server allows us to process the 5+ million QSOs from CQ WW CW 2014 in less than 6 minutes! This used to take over 45 minutes. Faster checking allows us to work more efficiently and do more testing of our software as we process the final results.
The new server was funded by a $4500 grant from the World Wide Radio Operators Foundation (www.wwrof.org). The WWROF is a non-profit organization devoted to improving operating skills. They have been instrumental in funding the infrastructure that it takes to host this website, the log robot, the log checking software, and the contest awards. Please take a moment to give them a donation. They are providing critical support to all of the CQ contests.
The CQ WW RTTY contest begins in less than 7 days. CQ WW SSB is October 24-25. Hope to see you on the air!