Page 55 May June 2014 TCA

THE SPORTS PAGE

— THE CANADIAN CONTEST SCENE

COUNTRY MULTIPLIERS AND NOW PHONE
Dirk, VY1NM, has asked about country lists. Somehow phone contests are much less
The most common one is the offcial ARRL complicated. A division between Assisted and
DXCC list that is used by a large number of Non-Assisted can easily be understood. The lack
Bob Nash, VE3KZ contests and is also the basis of the ARRL of frequencies and the often outrageous signal
5260 14th Sideroad, RR6 DXCC award. It can be found online at widths are our major challenges mixed in with a
Milton, ON L9T 2Y1
Tel. 905-878-7382 http://www.arrl.org/country-lists-prefxes. potpourri of accents.
Email: ve3kz@rac.ca
A number of contests use the augmented In the last issue, Derek, VE7RE, rightly
German DARC “Countries List” for European championed use of the standard phonetic
entities, modifying the ARRL list. This can be alphabet for phone operation. The ICAO
SPORTS PAGE INFO: found at http://www.darc.de/referate/dx/contest/ phonetics can work very well in many instances,
waedc/en/rules/. but what happens when your best attempt at
The contest results
provided in this column are For a little more detail on countries, I suggest making a call known just isn’t working? We tend
courtesy of the Maritime one of these “CTY” fles available at http://www. to fall back on international place names when
Contest Club team: the going gets rough due to signal strength or
country-fles.com/. These are the fles that the language problems.
Gary Bartlett, VE1RGB various logging programs use to identify country
Scott Nichols, VE1OP multipliers. If you run across a call that really Charles, HS0ZCH, had some very interesting
For more contest has you stumped the last resort fle is the ITU things to say about optimizing your use of
information check out these prefx list at http://www.arrl.org/international- place-name phonetics under these conditions.
sites: call-sign-series. He suggests using the common place names
with equally stressed syllables, thus we have
http://www.hornucopia. Even then calls such as the “TO” and “TX”
com/contestcal/weeklycont. series often show up on “whatever French America, Boston, Canada, Denmark, England,
html island” unannounced. Luckily the contest Florida, Guatemala, Honolulu, Italy, Japan,
http://www.contesting.com sponsor will know where they were and score Kentucky, London, Mexico, Norway, Ontario,
Pacifc, Quebec, Radio (of course), Santiago,
your log correctly. Dirk, this may be more than
http://www.sk3bg.se/ you were looking for but I’m always ready to Tokyo, United (as in States), Victoria, Washington,
contest/ X-Ray (what else), Yokohama and Zanzibar.
help VY1 activity!
http://www.arrl.org/ The ICAO phonetics that tend to fail most often
contests/calendar.html CW OR DIGITAL CW? are Golf, Uniform and Zulu. VE3KZ would be lost
http://www.arrl.org/ There was a time when operating CW as a without Zanzibar. There is no way you can stress
contests/rate-sheet/about. Non-Assisted operator was very straightforward. Zulu to make it as potent as Zanzibar. Much the
html One needed receiver(s), transmitter(s), same can be said for Uniform and regarding Golf:
http://www.cq-amateur- antenna(s), keying device(s) and a set of was that a letter or did you cough into the mike?
radio.com/awards.html headphones. Although technology has CANADA DAY
advanced relentlessly this combination is still
http://www.arrl.org/fles/fle/ what defnes this operating category. Good luck to all on July 1. I hope to get enough
DXCC/2013%20DXCC%20
Current_a.pdf There is very little controversy concerning RF back on the air after the several months in the
grip of December’s record ice catastrophe to
The “Contest Calendar” at memory keying. Changing from paper to work you all! I know I am not alone after following
the end of this column is electronic duping isn’t a concern. The problems the weather across this county during this
presented as a guide only. arise on the receiving side. Surely having interminable winter.
RAC and TCA do not devices in your shack that read the code and
necessarily endorse or even fnd where the station is on the band 73, Bob Victor Echo three Kentucky Zanzibar,
support any of the contests change the operating category to something ex-Victor Easy three Baker How Sugar
or the accuracy of the different, maybe Digital CW?
information.
If Non-Assisted CW consists of fnding the
Bands: The 30, 17 and 12m target station by tuning a band of frequencies
bands are never used in and the operator copying the call, what category
any contest. are you in when using a Skimmer to do all of
that? It isn’t Assisted because there was no
outside help.
Do we need a separate category to keep
traditional CW from becoming an obsolete
endeavour? For the RAC Store visit:
http://www.cafepress.ca/rac_radio
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