K5ZD Announcements

CQ WW Participant Survey

The CQ WW Contest Committee is conducting a survey to gather input from participants about various aspects of the contest. The answers will help us make decisions about the rules and future direction of the contest.

Anyone who has an interest in the CQ WW DX Contest may take the survey. Go to http://cqww2013.questionpro.com

Please take the survey only one time. The survey should take less than 10 minutes.

The survey provider recommends that you use a current web browser such as

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Use the default browser settings and please have Cookies enabled.

 

The survey will close on or before March 29, 2013.  Results will be published here on the CQ WW blog.

 

K5ZD Log checking

The Special Case of UA9

The CQ WW DX Contest uses the “DXCC entity list, Worked All Europe (WAE) multiplier list and IG9/IH9” to define country multipliers.

In late 2011 the the following announcement was made on the ARRL DXCC Blog :

“***1 December, 2011 forward, any QSO (with any date) with stations using the following prefixes, count for European Russia:***

Any call  with the prefixes UA through UI, or the prefix U,  and the numbers 8, and 9, followed by a suffix beginning with the letters F, G, or X (Perm and Komi).

Any call with the prefixes  RA through RZ, or the prefix R, and the numbers 8, and 9, followed by a suffix beginning with the letters F, G, or X (Perm and Komi).”

Since the CQ WW follows the ARRL DXCC list, we also changed our log checking software to count these stations for European Russia.

Why did the ARRL change this?  It is a complex topic and we can’t say for sure. It is believed that the SRR requested the change in an attempt to more closely align with the Ural mountains as the dividing line between Europe and Asia. Of course, this would be easier for us if the Russian call areas also changed.  They did not.

That same attempt to define the line between Europe and Asia also caused a small kink in the original WAZ zone map. Did you know there are also UA9 stations in zone 16?

The CQ WW zones are defined by the “Worked All Zones written rules.” They are found at http://www.cq-amateur-radio.com/cq_awards/cq_waz_awards/cq_waz_list.html

“Zone 16. Eastern Zone of Europe: EW (Belarus), ER (Moldova), UA1, UA2(except for RA2 and UA2-UI2), UA3. UA4,  UA5,UA6, UA7,UA9,UA9 (S,T,W), and UR (Ukraine).”

So…

UA9F is zone 17 in Eu Russia

UA9G is zone 17 in Eu Russia

UA9X is zone 17 in Eu Russia

UA9S is zone 16 in Asiatic Russia

UA9T is zone 16 in Asiatic Russia

UA9W is zone 16 in Asiatic Russia

Got that?  See the map below for a better view.

 

Don’t worry if you can’t remember the details.  Most UA9 stations do count as Asia. The CQ WW log checking software automatically calculates the scores for all logs submitted. We will make sure your log is calculated correctly including these special cases.

 

K5ZD Log checking

SDR Recordings Help with Log Checking

The new generation of Software Defined Radios (SDR) has the ability to cover wide frequency ranges and record all of the activity within that range.  This digital data can be spooled to disk for storage and transport. Other software allows the user to go back and “tune” through the recording by frequency and time.  It is just like listening to a replay of the contest as it happened over the air!

The CQ WW Contest Committee has used SDR recordings in the past to assist with the log checking. It is incredibly valuable for us to be able to go back and listen “live” to what happened at the time and frequency shown in the logs.

Lead by Steve Bolia, N8BJQ, the committee made a much greater effort to collect and use SDR data for checking the 2012 contests. SDR recordings of the complete SSB and CW contests for 2012 were made at 9 sites in Europe, North America, and Oceania. The following stations volunteered their SDR setups to make recordings:

  • ES5PC
  • OH6LI and OH6BG
  • HA1AG with HG6N guys
  • S50XX and S52X
  • WZ7I
  • N4ZR
  • N6TV
  • KH6LC
  • ZL2HAM

Having so many locations provided very good coverage of all of the contest bands and most of the world.  There are a few gaps which we are looking to fill in for the 2013 contest season.

Before the contest SKYPE messenger was used by the recording stations to work out the technical details of collecting the data using CW Skimmer software (for CW), a QS1R receiver, and OL5Q’s CWSL software.  This required lots of tweaking of settings, some software changes, and test recordings, but all was finalized the week before the contest.  All of the SDR clocks were synced to a time standard.

During the contest each site collected approximately 1.3TB of data on USB portable hard drives.  The US stations and ZL2HAM mailed their drives to N8BJQ who copied the data and returned the drives for use in the next contest.  Each drive took about 17 – 18 hours to copy!  All drives made the two-way trip with no problems.  The European SDR sites transferred data using FTP to one or two sites.  That took a couple of days for each contest.

Once the recording data was on hand, S50XX, CT1BOH and N8BJQ supported the log checking team by providing recordings of log segments or QSOs as requested.  The recordings were used to help check for things such as band change violations for Multi-Op stations, not In log checks, single op stations using more than one operator, stations having two signals on the air at the same time, stations working outside of their band, and some signal strength comparisons.

Two examples will illustrate how valuable the SDR data can be. The multi-single and multi-two categories have very specific rules about how many transmitted signals can be used and when band changes may occur. The SDR gives the committee the ability to know exactly what time a QSO was made and on what band. We are also able to listen to multiple frequencies at the same time. This lets us check if a station is transmitting more than one signal on a band. We were very impressed at how well some of the top multi-op teams stay within the rules!

Thanks to N8BJQ, S50XX, CT1BOH, and the SDR team for their help to make the CQ WW DX Contest results as accurate as possible. If you would like to join the recording team, please contact Steve, N8BJQ at n8bjq@cqww.com for more information.

 

K5ZD Announcements, CW

CQ WW CW Raw Scores Available

The raw scores for CQWW CW 2012 are now available at http://www.cqww.com/claimed.htm?mode=cw

These are scores calculated by the log checking software before any cross checking is performed. Scores could change between 2-20% depending on the accuracy of the operator.

Please check that your entry is in the correct category. Report any errors or questions to questions@cqww.com.

The raw scores for SSB have also been updated to include some late arriving logs.