CW Sweepstakes starts today at 4 PM Eastern (2100Z). Br sure your logging program has been updated
to reflect the addition of Prince Edward Island (PE) as a separate multiplier for a total of 84. PEI was previously included in the Maritime (MAR) section. Good luck.

I saw in the rules that at least 4 members of a club need to submit logs for the club to be listed in the club competition. I operated SO Unassisted for a few hours yesterday on only 20 meters, only S&P for around 18K points and submitted my log for the CTRI Contest Group. Logs need to be submitted within 5 days of the end of the contest.

OK, I don’t often operate CQ’s contests and this was the first time I ever saw in the rules a requirement for keeping an audio recording from both earpieces (as two separate channels) of your headset to be provided upon audit?!? Does anybody actually do this? I think it only applies to the top 5 stations, which I’m clearly not. I don’t even know how I would do this, and my HF headphones are all mono and wired Out-Of-Phase, LOL, so both channels would be the same…

I was “searching up in frequency” and came across several large pile-ups on a few of the rarer stations, where I called a few times and gave up and wrote their freq/call info on my pad and continued searching to try again on my next search up the band, after the stations with obviously better propagation had already completed their contacts and left the pile-up. I was able to work all of those stations on my second pass – except the guy from Namibia that was running his pileup by call areas. An hour later when he was back to running a regular pileup I worked him on my second call. There were also a coupe of interesting long-path contacts.

Anyway it was a good reason to fire up the woodstove in my shack out back.

Best 73, and Stay Well, Chris WB2VVV

CTRI will hold it’s annual elections meeting via ZOOM this Saturday, Oct. 17, at 9 AM. President Charlie,K1ECU, will preside. Meeting host is W1XX.

The IMPORTANT Election is at hand. The CTRI Election!

Game time for the big contest season. Personally, if I’m going to watch my computer decode stuff, it’s more fun to see it one character at a time.

Call: W1AN
Operator(s): W1AN
Station: W1AN

Class: Single Op HP
QTH: CT
Operating Time (hrs): 7.5

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Mults
-------------------
    6:   37    15
    2:   58    21
  222:   26    15
  432:   23    14
  903:           
  1.2:   10     7
  2.3:           
  3.4:           
  5.7:           
  10G:           
  24G:           
-------------------
Total:  154    72  Total Score = 16,056

Club: CT RI Contest Group

Almost missed contest. Checked on Friday night for the schedule. There was quite a bit of activity and enhancement on the upper bands. Not much e-skip on 6M, however.
73, John W1AN

To offer respite from COVID-9 restrictions, this is an invitation to a CTRI informal ZOOM ragchew hosted by W1XX. This is not an official meeting.

You can download the ZOOM.com app to check into this meeting.

You should use your callsign as a screen name.  Once you are in the “waiting room,” a.k.a. the QRX room, the host will accept you in.

Agenda:  Share your recent contest activity with the group with your expectations for upcoming contest events.  For example,  I have had fun in  the SP DX Contest, YO DX Contest, and All Asia Phone Contest.  I know several of you have  done similarly.

Details follow.  If you need an individual email invitation, please let me know.

John Lindholm is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: W1XX’s CTRI ZOOM Ragchew

Time: Sep 14, 2020 06:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting

https://us04web.zoom.us/j/71643272511?pwd=K1NZSFoyb3ZGZGhNRFdOTWJETnJVUT09

 

Meeting ID: 716 4327 2511

Passcode: 2RjMHW

Hope to see then 73. – John, W1XX

If you have a cox.net account and receive this message then pls post comment that that effect.

Test

A fun CW event with three independent 4-hour competitions.

When: Sept 4 (Tonight) 8-midnite, Sat. 8-noon and 4-8pm
Bands: 160-10
Exchange: SN + Name. SN’s are per session
Scoring: Work stations per band, 1 pt per quo
Mults: Unique calls per band (NOT S/P/C’s)

Rules: https://cwops.org/cwops-tests/cw-open/

Hi all,
This VHF contest had a lot of activity last year, and it was across all the modes, not just digi. Be sure to use the latest WSJT-x version, 2.2.0 or higher, and set VHF Contest Mode. Try FT4 mode on 50.318 during strong openings.

Local time: 2pm Sat–5pm Sun
Bands: 6m, 2m
Modes: all legal
Exchange: 4 character grid
Scoring: Work stations once per band. 1 pt 6m, 2 pts 2m
Mults: Grids per band
Assistance: Allowed for all, except no self-spotting

I spent a bit of time (4.1 hrs) in this contest as SOAB HP CW only. It is almost a no-brainer contest where you can work anybody on any band. Of course no band dupes allowed. What made it even more fun was that the bands were open! My 80/40 dipole(MFJ special) that I strung up was not very high and didn’t work too well at all. Hope others in the club got into the mix. Here are my results. I have not discovered a way in this form to change the text to a fixed pitch font so that it is more easily readable.[7/17/20 – and I was just reminded how to save preformatting using pre and /pre. The mind is a terrible thing to lose]

        Band      Mode    QSOs     Pts  ITU  HQ   Pt/Q
         3.5        CW       8      16    3    0   2.0
           7        CW      40      84    8   16   2.1
          14        CW      72     218   13   21   3.0
          21        CW      63     179    9   14   2.8
          28        CW      21      55    4   11   2.6
       Total               204     552   37   62   2.7

            Score : 54,648
              Rig : Elecraft K3s+KPA500 amp

73, Ken K3IU

Last minute reminder. There have been some excellent 6 meter openings to Europe already this month, including this morning. It may be mostly an FT8 affair, or it may not. Last year’s CQ VHF contest in July had a good mix of modes.
There is a new 2.2.0 release of WSJT-x with amazing decoding ability. I’ve had over 30 decodes on 6m from Europe in a single cycle, and I have only a mini antenna.
Look for FT4 on 50.318 for faster action when there are strong signals.
I don’t have any other bands so I can’t comment on how to operate there!

Local: 2pm Sat. to 11pm Sun.
Modes: anything legal
Exchange: 4 char. grid square (FN31 or FN41 for most of us)
Scoring: Work once per band. 1 pt 6 & 2 , More points for higher frequencies
Mults: Grids per band

Greetings All –

Hope you have been able to stay safe/stay well during the pandemic. Field Day is just two weeks away and it will be quite different of course this year. Wanted to encourage folks to be radio-active in some fashion for FD during the 24 hours of Sat/Sun June 27/28 1800Z-1800Z (2pm-2pm local).

I plan on activating the home station, but utilizing emergency power (Class 1E) for the first time from here. In addition, I hope to mentor a less experienced contester from our club… and get them ‘running’ with N1MM+ Logger while using the new technology of the Icom IC-7300 radio — and overall, just having FUN!
A mix of CW (2 pts/Q) and SSB (1pt/Q) modes is planned.
Both 10m and 15m came alive somewhat during the recent CQWW WPX contest so we’ll hope for more of that 27 days following (when solar conditions often repeat). And don’t forget E-skip season on 6m either.

Would be interested in knowing of others FD plans as well!

When submitting your score/info to ARRL (typically via their on-line applet) members should be consistent with inclusion of our exact club name to ensure credit [ CTRI Contest Group ].

RE: ARRL and Contest info/results — they just revamped their Contests Portal Page, so check it out…
https://contests.arrl.org/

Good luck to all in your Field Day 2020 individual efforts … and hope to C U on the bands.

73, Bill W1WBB
AI1TT Trustee, “Aquidneck Island Transmitting Team”