[nrv-hams] Work the world this weekend!

[Kay Craigie]

This weekend is the CQ World Wide WPX contest, SSB edition. The fun starts
at 0000 UTC Saturday (8 pm Friday night local time) and ends at 2359 UTC
Sunday (7:59 PM Sunday night local time).

WPX stands for "Worked All Prefixes." The prefix, in case you were
wondering, is the first part of the callsign including the number. My prefix
is N3. Len Sutphin's prefix is KC5. Ben Hastings's prefix is KV4. Serious
competitors try to work as many different call sign prefixes as possible. We
will hear some really unusual prefixes from other countries. Don't worry
about what country they're in. "Work First, Worry Later." I'll be happy to
help you after the contest to figure out what you've got, if a call sign
doesn't come up on QRZ.com.

The neat thing about this contest is that everybody works everybody. We
don't have to remember what countries are out of bounds. 

The next neat thing is that you could be very popular in this contest. N3 is
as common as rocks among hams who take part in contests. Nobody ever tells
me, "Hey, thanks for the new one." When my call sign was WT3P, I was
extremely popular, because there were only 26 call signs with WT3 prefixes
in the world, and only 2 of us used our home calls in contests. There are
vastly more KK4 and KJ4 call signs (for example) in the world than N3's, but
very few hams with these prefixes take part in contests. So a number of
NRVARC members with prefixes that are either altogether rare (like AI4) or
rare among contesters could make some people very happy in this contest. 

To make a contact in the contest, you will need to send the other station a
signal report (always 59) and a serial number. That's a sequential contact
number starting with 1. Keep a note in your log of the numbers you send so
you won't accidentally send duplicate serial numbers. The other ops will
send the same kind of info back to you.

You can work states and countries and make great progress towards operating
awards.

As always, contesting is not done on the 12, 17, 30, and 60 meter bands. 

As always, avoid cute phonetics that will just confuse people from other
countries.

As always, have fun on the ham bands! 73 - Kay N3KN