[nrv-hams] CW DX contest coming up

[Kay Craigie]

The ARRL International DX Contest, CW edition, will be on the air from 0000
UTC Saturday, February 18 through 2359 UTC Sunday, February 19. At this time
of year, 0000 UTC is 7 PM Eastern time. So 0000 UTC Saturday is 7 PM Friday
evening and 2359 UTC Sunday is 6:59 PM Sunday evening Eastern time.

In this contest, stations in Canada and the contiguous 48 USA states work
the rest of the world. This means we should not call a Canadian station or a
USA station except for Alaska and Hawaii. As with other major DX contests,
the Friday night action is a total zoo. Unless you plan to compete
seriously, waiting until Saturday to jump in may be just as well.

What you send to the DX stations: A signal report (always 599) and your
state 2-letter abbreviation. 
What the DX stations send to you: A signal report (always 599) and their
power in watts.

A slightly confusing thing is if the DX operator is running 1000 watts.
There's a variety of ways to send the 1000. Many people will send K or KW
(that is, kilowatt). I don't think I've ever heard anybody send plain old
1000.

You may hear operators using letters where you'd expect numbers to be.
Things like 5NN or 4TT.

In all CW operating, abbreviations are common in order to speed things up.
In contesting and DXing we often use so-called "cut numbers" to reduce the
time it takes to transmit a number. When you cut a number, you use a letter
to represent the number. The most common numbers to be cut are 0 (cut to T)
and 9 (cut to N). 

Is there a logic to this? Yes. The Morse symbol for 0 is five dashes. The
Morse symbol for T is one dash. You lop off 4 dashes to cut a 0 down to a T.
In the ARRL contest you'll often hear people who are running 400 watts, for
example, sending their power as 4TT rather than 400.

The Morse symbol for 9 is dah-dah-dah-dah-dit. The symbol for N is dah-dit.
You lop off the first 3 dashes to cut a 9 down to an N. This is why Morse
operators usually send a signal report as 5NN instead of 599.

It is not wrong to send the complete symbol for the number. It's just a
skootch slower to send the complete symbol. In serious contesting if you can
do something quicker, you do it that way.

Of course if you're not planning to turn in an entry, you don't have to log
the power information at all -- just the basic time, band, mode, and
callsign. But if you if you do copy the power, you will start to notice
patterns in the numbers sent from other countries. Did you know that not all
countries allow hams to use 1500 watts?

The phone edition of the contest will be March 3-4.

73 - Kay N3KN