30 Ham Radio Contest Tips -- Review UBN's

This month, I’m providing a ham radio contest tip-a-day (along with other posts) to help you trigger your own contesting activities.Today’s tip: Review UBN's.If you're new to contesting, your first question is "what's a UBN?" It's a good question. Based upon some log review analytics, unverified contacts with other stations fall into these three categories:

Unique: The callsign worked in the log was unique compared to all other logs submitted in the contest. This is one reason why it is important for all contesters to send in their log. Points, however, are not deducted for unique calls in the log.Busted (sometimes called "bad"): are those callsigns that are valid, but not copied correctly. For example, putting K9JX in the log as an incorrect copy of my callsign K9JY means that your contact will not count and points are lost.Not-in-the-log: You claimed K9JY as a contact, but K9JY's log doesn't have you in it. Since there wasn't a two-way confirmation of the contact, it was removed from your score.

UBN reports are provided to you after the contest committee has reviewed the logs from the contest. Not all contests participate, however, but the major CQ Magazine and ARRL Contests provide this service.UBN reports constitute a major measure of the accuracy of your log. The higher your accuracy, the higher your score given the number of contacts.Reviewing your UBN report -- and trending it over time -- will give you a good indication on how accurate your logging is and which direction it is heading.Scot, K9JY