[nrv-hams] ARRL 10 meter contest this weekend

[Kay Craigie]

The ARRL 10 meter contest begins at 0000 UTC Saturday, December 10, and ends
at 2359 UTC  on Sunday, December 11.  In our local time, that's 7 PM Friday,
December 9, to 6:59 PM on Sunday, December 11. Full info about the event is
posted at http://www.arrl.org/10-meter.

Ten meters was dead for years but has come back to life, and you can work
the world on 100 watts and a simple antenna. In this contest, you can use
SSB, CW, or both. If you work a station on phone, you can work the same
station again on CW. Ten meters is mainly a daylight band but you may be
able to work some stations after our local sunset.

You can work stations in the USA and in all other countries. You can even
work maritime mobile stations (they'll give their callsign plus /MM - for
example, N3KN/MM).

The exchange (what you say and what the other stations will say to you) is
as follows.

Stations in the USA (including Alaska and Hawaii) send a signal report  (59
on phone, 599 on CW) and our state. I would send 59 Virginia on phone and
599 VA on CW.

Stations in Mexico send a signal report and their state (there's a list of
their state abbreviations on the ARRL web site).

Stations on shipboard send a signal report and their International
Telecommunications Union (ITU) Region: R1, R2, or R3.

All other stations send a signal report and a serial number.

If you're operating just for fun, you don't really need to write down the
whole exchange that you receive, but (a) it's interesting to know what to
expect to hear and (b) if you try logging the exchanges on paper, you'll get
a sense of what contesting was like before we had computer programs for
contest logging. 

Have fun! 73 - Kay N3KN