[WIARC] SS

[jim funk]

Just a reminder:

This weekend is the CW portion of ARRL Sweepstakes, the granddaddy of all
domestic contests.

The test begins at 3 p.m. Saturday and ends at 9 p.m. Sunday, CST.  There is
a 24 hour maximum operating time out of the 30.  Work stations in the US
(plus KP4 and KP2) and Canada once, not once per band.  There are 80
ARRL/CRRL sections, and working all of them (possible, but not easy) is
termed a "Clean Sweep" and qualifies you for a nifty coffee mug.

The exchange is modeled after the preamble of an official ARRL message form:

NR:  number of the message; begin with 1 and go nuts
PR:  "precedence"; in SS, use Q for 5 watts or less, A for 5-150 watts, B
for over 150, S for school, M for multi-op and U for packet-assisted
CL:  your callsign is part of the exchange; insert it here
CK: "check"; in a message, it's the word count; in SS, it's the last two
digits of the year you were first licensed
SEC: your ARRL section; IL for most of you

The SSB portion occurs in 2 weeks.

Even if you don't do much CW, try it.  The upper portions of the CW bands
are a good place to try for slower speeds.  Sweepstakes is the ABSOLUTE BEST
way to increase your cw speed!

73, Jim N9JF (/0):  "NR 1 A N9JF/0 65 NE"