[nrv-hams] DX fun this weekend

[Kay Craigie]

The International Amateur Radio Union (IARU) holds its annual "HF World
Championship" contest this coming weekend. It's an unusual contest in that
both phone and CW are used. We can operate just one mode or do both. 

The exchange (what we send and copy) is a signal report (always 59 or 599)
and our ITU (International Telecommunications Union) zone. For us, that's
zone 8. A twist is that officials of the IARU and national society HQ
stations (such as W1AW) will send a signal report and an abbreviation for
their position or society instead of their ITU zone. If you copy some
alphanumeric gibberish instead of a zone number, that's what it means. For
example, W1AW would send "59 ARRL" and the president of the IARU would send
"59 AC" (AC stands for Administrative Council). Of course if you are just
working DX and aren't going to submit an entry, you don't have to log that
stuff, but it's good to know these things.

We can work the same station once per mode on each band. So if I work LA2RR
on 20 meters phone, I can work him again on 20 meters CW.

The event begins at 1200 UTC on July 14 and ends at 1200 UTC on July 15. To
find out more about this and other contests, a good source of information is
http://www.hornucopia.com/contestcal/weeklycont.php

If you don't want to play in the contest, try 12, 17, and 30 meters. By lady
& gentleman's agreement, contesting is not done on those bands. Or try a
digital mode.

Have fun on the bands! 73 - Kay N3KN