CQ Amateur Radio September 2022

SEPTEMBER SHELBY, NORTH CAROLINA — The Shelby Amateur Radio Club will hold the Shelby 2022 Hamfest and the 2022 ARRL North Carolina Section Convention from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Friday, September 2, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., and 8 a.m. to 1 p.m., Sunday, September 3 at the Cleveland County Fairgrounds, 1751 E. Marion Street. Phone: (980) 295-5151. Email: <chairman@shelbyhamfest.org>. Website: <www.shelbyhamfest.com>. Talk-in 146.880-. VE exams. LOCKPORT, NEW YORK — The Lancaster Amateur Radio Club will hold the Lancaster Hamfest beginning 7 a.m., Saturday, September 10 at the Transit Drive In, 6655 S. Transit Road. Website: <www.w2so.org>. Talk-in 147.255 (PL 107.2). SHEPERDSVILLE, KENTUCKY — The Greater Louisville Hamfest Association will hold the Greater Louisville Hamfest 2022 from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m., Saturday, September 10 at the Paroquet Springs Conference Centre, 395 Paroquet…

Hams Help Red Cross in Kentucky Flood Response Amateur radio operators from Kentucky ARES® (Amateur Radio Emergency Service) helped Red Cross disaster teams in the aftermath of historic flooding in eastern Kentucky in late July. The ARRL Letter reports that ARES members provided communication support for Red Cross damage assessment teams that made their way through flooded areas, noting that communication needs were complicated by the rural region’s mountainous terrain. ARES groups in Ohio and Virginia were placed on standby in case additional help was needed. NOAA: Above-Average Hurricane Season Still Expected The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) provided an updated forecast for the 2022 Atlantic hurricane season in early August, sticking with its initial prediction of an above-normal number of storms, but scaling it back slightly. According to the agency, forecasters…

The SSB results of the 2022 CQ World Wide WPX Contest are published in this issue and, not surprisingly, the number of logs submitted is down from last year. There are two main reasons for this: 1) the “pandemic bump” of 2020 and 2021 is receding, as more people return to “normal” activities, and 2) CQ’s policy restricting the participation of stations in Russia and Belarus due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (as well as the total lack of entries from Ukraine, where ham radio is shut down due to the war). Because of this drop in submitted logs, CQ management has been getting quite a bit of pressure from some top contesters and major contesting clubs to reverse our policy adopted in response to the invasion, particularly with the approach…

HamSCI founder and University of Scranton professor Nathaniel Frissell, W2NAF, has been awarded a nearly $400,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to study changes in the ionosphere at dawn and dusk (a period we hams know as “grayline”) and during solar eclipses. According to the university, Frissell will work with students there and at Case Western Reserve University, as well as amateurs around the country, to gather data using so-called “Grape” receivers designed using another NSF grant for the HamSCI Personal Space Weather Station project. Frissell says there will be an annular solar eclipse visible in the continental U.S. next year, as well as a total eclipse in 2024, noting that these will be the last solar eclipses to traverse the country until 2044. The grant will fund an additional…

“Well, this was my breakout contest of the new cycle! … Cycle 25, here we go!” – W6QU “What an absolute joy 15 meters was. There were stations I’d never heard before. Great time, and great contest.” – WI7J “WPX has become one of my favorites. If it talks, you can work it!” – N7DX “This was the most on-air fun I had in the past eleven years, and I’ve been operating since 1957. What a hoot” – W2STM If the 2022 running of the CQWW WPX SSB contest is any sign, then we are in for a wild propagation ride during Cycle 25. Nearly one-third of all contacts were logged on 15 meters, and 10-meter QSOs were up over 400% compared to last year. A summary of the action is provided in Figure…

RTTY is the transmission, via radio, of TTY, or teletype. This mode of transmission can be considered as one of the oldest applications of binary technology in telecommunications, right after Morse Code. It was invented in the 19th century, and was first used in radio by the U.S. Army in the 1920s, and commercially starting in 1932. It consisted of printing machines that output audio signals, consisting of 5 bits of information that were transmitted by radio to other machines, which printed the received text. These signals allow text to be transmitted much faster than through Morse code, and were therefore preferred when large amounts of information needed to be sent in a short time. Within amateur radio, the use of RTTY began shortly after the end of World War II, on…