A few tips for CQ WW CW

A few pieces of advice for those operating in CQ WW CW this weekend.

Make sure you know who you are working. With the short exchange, it is easy for two running stations near the same frequency to get in synch. Both reply to a caller. The caller is only working one of them. Someone gets a Not-In-Log (NIL) with the +2x penalty. If something doesn’t sound right, ask for a repeat.

This is especially true if you are chasing spots. With stations close together, you may click on a spot and actually be working a station that is near the spot frequency, but not the station you think it is. We also see many cases where a spotted station leaves a frequency and is replaced by someone new. People click on the spot and log the station that was there before.

Pay attention to callsigns with lots of dots. KH6ND often becomes K5BND! S50A becomes SH0A. (Watch out for calls like BI4SSB.) With the busted call penalty, these can be expensive errors.

Please enter the correct category in your log. If you use the Cluster, CW Skimmer or RBN, you are in the Assisted category.

If you want to enter single band and also work stations on other bands, put all QSOs into one log and then mark the CATEGORY-BAND in the header. DO NOT SEND MULTIPLE ENTRIES FOR THE SAME CALLSIGN! Each log will overwrite the previous one.

Use the web page to upload your log. http://www.cqww.com/logcheck/ This page will give immediate feedback on the format of your log. Once you go through the checking, your log is NOT submitted until you enter your email address and press submit. When you receive the email confirmation OR see your log on the logs received page (http://www.cqww.com/logs_received_cw.htm) then you know your log has been received.

If you notice someone breaking the rules or that has a bad signal, make a note of the call, time, and frequency, contact us at : https://cqww.com/contact after the contest.

Be considerate and enjoy the magic of radio. Most of all – have fun!

 

How close to the band edge can you go?

We always get a number of emails after the contest complaining about how close USA stations get to the bottom of the US phone allocation on 20, 15, and 10 meters. Doug, K1DG, had done some research into this topic and arrived at the following conclusion.

Quoting from the FCC rules regarding signal bandwidth (in Part 2, not Part 97):

————-

PART 2–FREQUENCY ALLOCATIONS AND RADIO TREATY MATTERS; GENERAL RULES AND REGULATIONS–Table of Contents

Subpart C–Emissions

Sec. 2.202  Bandwidths.

(a) Occupied bandwidth. The frequency bandwidth such that, below its lower and above its upper frequency limits, the mean powers radiated are each equal to 0.5 percent of the total mean power radiated by a given emission.

————-

In a few other places, the FCC falls back on that “0.5 percent” standard. Or, if you prefer, -23 dB. In part 97, (97.3 (a) (8)) to be exact, amateur service signal bandwidths are defined at the 26 dB points. (I believe that is an error, where the FCC guy who wrote it did the 1% part in power terms, then did the .5 part in voltage terms).

My conclusion from this is that on USB, you are OK at 500 Hz inside the band. 600 Hz is real safe. Closer than 500 Hz is hard to justify, due to the compromised third-order distortion performance of most ham “linear” amps.

How to measure.  Record the mean S-meter reading right there on 21200.6 USB, then switch to LSB and set the dial on the radio to 21200.0 and record the mean S-meter reading there. If the difference is 26 dB the transmission is legal according to FCC rules in the Code of Federal Regulations, Title 47, Part 2, Section 2.202 paragraph (a), and the tighter rules for hams at 47CFR97.3(a)(8).

The above applies only to those operating under the jurisdiction of the USA Federal Communications Commission.  Other governments may have their own interpretation to what is in the band or not.

Band Plans and Sharing During Contests

CQ WW RTTY Contest Director Ed Muns, W0YK, recently wrote a response to someone who was commenting on the activity during the CQ WW RTTY Contest. Ed’s reply is equally true for the CQWW SSB and CW contest weekends so we wanted to share it here with everyone.

Note: The CQ WW rule II states “Observance of established band plans is strongly encouraged.”  Even during times of high activity, we need to share the bands in accordance with the band plans as best we can.

 

What does “the recognized RTTY portions of the bands” mean?  Each country’s telecommunications authority determines what modes can be used in specified portions of the amateur bands.  Contest entries must follow this rule and all other amateur service rules of their country.  Not doing so is grounds for disqualification in this contest.  However, the contest sponsor cannot police thousands of participants in hundreds of entities around the world with their separate diverse amateur service rules.

If you are referring to voluntary band plans, they are even more problematic.  There are hundreds of them, all unenforceable and with many conflicts between them, especially across world regions and countries.  More important, though, is that band plans assume normality.  A major contest is not at all “normal” use of amateur bands.  Outside of RTTY contests and DXpeditions, one is hard-pressed to find a RTTY transmission anywhere on the amateur bands.  Yet, during a major RTTY contest, the number of running stations, spaced out so as not to overlap each other, cannot fit within the “normal” RTTY band plan segments.  (But, still within the country’s amateur service band digital segments specified by its telecommunications regulations.)   I expect all amateurs, contesters and non-contesters, to value the high activity that contesting brings to our amateur bands at discrete times during the year.  This reduces the risk that the amateur service spectrum is reduced in favor of other services.

Here is my personal analogy.  I receive my postal mail at a post office box in my town’s Post Office.  The building is located adjacent to our town plaza which is turned into a farmer’s market every Sunday morning.  During this time, traffic congestion in this area is high, the public road directly at the Post Office is off limits and parking is impossible to find within blocks of the Post Office.  Accordingly, I am essentially denied reasonable access to my mail box every Sunday morning.  I could protest this outrage, or I could be thankful that the farmers market is one of many uses of our public plaza that helps justify its existence.  I appreciate having that area in our town.  It is shared space and since I know the farmers market is always, and only, on Sunday mornings, it is  small matter for me to adjust my life to not expect access to my mail box during that time.  This is a minor manageable personal inconvenience for the value of a town plaza.  I personally enjoy walking my dog there, meeting friends for a chat and attending the Jazz music series held on 10 Wednesday evenings during the summer.

Other similar examples are bicycle road races, distance foot races, parades, funeral processions, music events, political rallies, athletic events, etc.  All these specific one-time temporary events disrupt the “normal” use of our public roadways and subsequent access to certain areas of the community.  The important thing is that the public roadways are being put to lots of passionate use to justify their existence and maintenance.

All amateur interests need to share our common asset of the amateur service band segments.  It is much more efficient to accumulate our various interests and share our limited spectrum space across time slices rather than dedicating sub-segments to the various special interests.  Take the contesting special interest as an example.  If a fixed amount of space were to be allocated to contesting, it would be much too small to meet the activity level during contests.  Worse, most days of the year, the space wouldn’t be used at all, lying completely vacant when other special interests could use it.

73,

Ed W0YK
CQ RTTY Contests Director

CQ WW 2013 Operating Stats

Mark ZL3AB posted the following to the cq-contest mailing list.

I was wondering what the average operating time in the CQ WW 2013 CW and SSB contests were for single operators. But although the operating hours were listed in the results database you could not sort on it.

Therefore I dropped the Single 2013 Operator All Band and Single Op All Band Assisted HP/LP/QRP results into a spreadsheet to figure it out. I left out the single band entrants as I felt it would distort the figures since many would have to stop when the propagation did.

Average hours

        Single Op   Single Op(A)  Overall
CW       17.4        18.1          17.8
SSB      14.7        13.8          14.2

Also 73% of operators operated for less than 24 hours in the CW contest with 79% doing so in the SSB contest. I did a break down on 6 hourly intervals:

CW 2013
Hours     SO     SO(A)     Overall
42-48    2.8%    3.2%       3.0%
36-41.9  4.0%    6.3%       5.0%
30-35.9  6.1%    8.2%       7.0%
24-29.9  11.5%   12.3%      11.8%
18-23.9  17.7%   16.8%      17.3%
12-17.9  20.2%   19.9%      20.1%
6-11.9   23.4%   20.0%      21.9%
0-5.9    14.3%   13.2%      13.8%

SSB 2013
Hours     SO     SO(A)     Overall
42-48    1.6%    2.0%       1.7%
36-41.9  2.4%    4.6%       3.2%
30-35.9  4.9%    6.8%       5.5%
24-29.9  9.3%    10.6%      9.8%
18-23.9  15.2%   15.0%      15.1%
12-17.9  19.7%   19.7%      19.7%
6-11.9   25.7%   23.4%      24.9%
0-5.9    21.2%   18.0%      20.0%

Interestingly there seemed to be no material difference in time operated in each category between single ops and single ops assisted in both contests.

 

Thanks Mark!