Posts from — July 2007

Subscribers here will have noticed lots of articles in their subscription feed. This is the result of moving K9JY from Yahoo! hosting to Bluehost. The reasons for the change are many; suffice to say it was time to move on.

The disadvantage of this move is the loss of the WriteLog User site; this is being worked as we speak. It was time the site was updated anyway.

Patience — I’m tired of writing about site updates instead of contesting and WriteLog!

Scot, K9JY

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Ham radio follows the seasons. In the dead of winter, we work the low bands working with the darkness to carry our signals around the planet. In the summer, we blissfully talk into the night, our signals carried on the high bands basking in the light.

But, from a contesting viewpoint, winter and summer are poor times to contest on all bands. The reason: the light and dark times are very different in each part of the world. Consequently, there is built in bias to the different parts of the world for working the bands.

No, the best times for a contest on all bands are when the the sun is right above the equator with equal day and night around the world. All bands are in play the same relative time during the 24-hour day. Propagation evens out to match the evenness of the sunrise and sunset.

Do you have access to a grey line program? On many, the program allows you to change the time and season to see how the grey line looks. Taking a picture of the grey line at a summer solstice or an equinox clearly shows this propagation difference.

Here is a picture from the summer solstice with the sun it’s furthest north:

You see how narrow the darkness area is in the northern hemisphere? And the darkness is spread out in the southern hemisphere because the sun is so far north. Antarctica is dark all day and the Arctic is the land where the sun never sets.

Contrast that with the spring or fall equinox grey line:

See how square the darkness area looks now? At the spring and fall equinox, all bands in all parts of the world have equal propagation.

And that makes a contest fair. At least as far as propagation on a band goes.

Scot, K9JY

Another field day has come and gone. When I was in my club back in Wisconsin, there was the continued debate as to whether or not Field Day was a “contest” or a “social gathering with emergency testing” intent.

Personally, I’ve always thought of it as contesting in a hurry and on the run. Setting up, breaking down, exposing many to a fast paced weekend of contacts with media looking over your shoulder…if that’s not a contest of some sort, I don’t know what is a contest.

But I think Field Day is another type of contest: it is a contest about the health of your club. It’s a contest on your club’s involvement, participation, and social interaction. It’s a contest about how well involved new members can be in your club.

You see, Field Day is no easy thing to pull off. You have to find a site. You have to line up radios. You have to line up antennas. You have to line up operators and a schedule. You have to line up food. You have to line up publicity. Somehow, you have to practice what you can’t practice before the event. You have to accommodate those that want rate, rate, rate and those that just want to have a good time. And you have to figure out all the logistics of who is bringing what and when and how it all gets done.

In short: there are conflicts all over the place that need to be addressed and resolved. Or, people don’t participate. That’s the contest for your club.

It’s an interesting perspective, isn’t it? How your club performs as a club is embodied in how your Field Day works.

I don’t pretend to have all the answers for a “good” or “bad” Field Day.

But, as leadership in a club, you should be able to evaluate your Field Day based not upon the score, but instead based upon how well your club performed at efficiently, effectively, and effortlessly pulled off such a club-wide event.

If, in your mind, Field Day wasn’t efficient, effective, or effortless, your club has a little bit of work to do for this contest.

Scot, K9JY