The Elmer's Shack
Contesting
Know how to run your HF radio split?
How about HF cross-band?
By Jim Wright, N2GXJ
Here’s a test. Do you know how to set up your HF radio to listen on one frequency and transmit on another? In radio jargon, this is called “operating split”. It is a skill worth learning with your HF radio. Why? You will encounter cases where a special event station, or a popular DX station, will be saying they are “listening up”, meaning they are operating split, and expect you to also. When operating split, they will be transmitting on the frequency you are hearing them on, but they are not listening for any replies there (they don’t want you to transmit there). When they say they are “listening up”, they are telling you they are listening on a higher frequency than they are transmitting on, and expect you to transmit on a higher frequency than they are transmitting on so that they will hear you.
Why might they be operating split? One reason is to spread out the callers to try and manage a pile-up better. In a pile up, where lots of stations are all trying to respond to one station’s CQ at the same time, the station that is calling CQ may just hear a roar of noise from everyone yelling out their callsigns to try and get a contact. This is a way to spread out the callers, making it easier for the CQing station to pick out individuals. Another reason to do this is to allow more contacts per hour. If just using one frequency, you will encounter cases where the CQing station does respond to someone, but that someone can’t hear they are being responded to because of other stations still late shouting out their callsigns on top of the CQing station’s reply. By “listening up”, nobody should be trying to reply on the CQ station’s frequency, giving everyone a chance to hear the CQing station’s replies, improving the contacts/hour rate for the CQing station.
Another reason, less common, is to address differences in the band plans between countries. During some contests you may encounter case where you hear a station in a different country transmitting voice on a frequency that you are not supposed to transmit voice on from here in the USA. As part of their transmission, if they want to talk to USA stations, they will know this and will say what other frequency they are listening on that they know is within the USA band plan for you to transmit a reply on. You set up your radio for split operation, listening to their transmission on one frequency, while transmitting back to them on a separate frequency that is in our band plan that they say they are listening on.
There’s another case I’ve written about before. This is when operating cross-band with military stations, such as during the Armed Forces Day Cross-Band exercise earlier this year (May 14, 2022). During the cross-band exercise, the military station would transmit on a frequency that is outside of the ham bands, announcing during their transmission where they were listening within the ham bands for your reply. You would set up your HF radio to operate split, so you would be listening on their out-of-ham-band frequency, and transmit on the ham frequency they said they were listening on.
Is there another HF cross-band opportunity coming up to practice this skill? Yes there is! Funny you should ask. Please mark your calendars for December 6 and 7, 2022. In memory of Pearl Harbor day this year, the Battleship Iowa Amateur Radio Association has received permission for a special cross-band activation, using the active duty callsign “NEPM” for the Battleship Iowa. They will be transmitting outside the ham band (e.g. 14.375 MHz) from 1500-2400 UTC both days, with the operator advising listeners as to where they are listening for replies from within the ham bands. Special QSL cards will be available to anyone succeeding in making a confirmed 2-way contact. More details available at : https://biara.org. We’ll send a reminder when the date gets closer. For now, it’s time to break out the operating manuals to figure out how to set up for this, specific to your HF radio! Should be fun! Wishing good luck to anyone who gives this a try!
How about HF cross-band?
By Jim Wright, N2GXJ
Here’s a test. Do you know how to set up your HF radio to listen on one frequency and transmit on another? In radio jargon, this is called “operating split”. It is a skill worth learning with your HF radio. Why? You will encounter cases where a special event station, or a popular DX station, will be saying they are “listening up”, meaning they are operating split, and expect you to also. When operating split, they will be transmitting on the frequency you are hearing them on, but they are not listening for any replies there (they don’t want you to transmit there). When they say they are “listening up”, they are telling you they are listening on a higher frequency than they are transmitting on, and expect you to transmit on a higher frequency than they are transmitting on so that they will hear you.
Why might they be operating split? One reason is to spread out the callers to try and manage a pile-up better. In a pile up, where lots of stations are all trying to respond to one station’s CQ at the same time, the station that is calling CQ may just hear a roar of noise from everyone yelling out their callsigns to try and get a contact. This is a way to spread out the callers, making it easier for the CQing station to pick out individuals. Another reason to do this is to allow more contacts per hour. If just using one frequency, you will encounter cases where the CQing station does respond to someone, but that someone can’t hear they are being responded to because of other stations still late shouting out their callsigns on top of the CQing station’s reply. By “listening up”, nobody should be trying to reply on the CQ station’s frequency, giving everyone a chance to hear the CQing station’s replies, improving the contacts/hour rate for the CQing station.
Another reason, less common, is to address differences in the band plans between countries. During some contests you may encounter case where you hear a station in a different country transmitting voice on a frequency that you are not supposed to transmit voice on from here in the USA. As part of their transmission, if they want to talk to USA stations, they will know this and will say what other frequency they are listening on that they know is within the USA band plan for you to transmit a reply on. You set up your radio for split operation, listening to their transmission on one frequency, while transmitting back to them on a separate frequency that is in our band plan that they say they are listening on.
There’s another case I’ve written about before. This is when operating cross-band with military stations, such as during the Armed Forces Day Cross-Band exercise earlier this year (May 14, 2022). During the cross-band exercise, the military station would transmit on a frequency that is outside of the ham bands, announcing during their transmission where they were listening within the ham bands for your reply. You would set up your HF radio to operate split, so you would be listening on their out-of-ham-band frequency, and transmit on the ham frequency they said they were listening on.
Is there another HF cross-band opportunity coming up to practice this skill? Yes there is! Funny you should ask. Please mark your calendars for December 6 and 7, 2022. In memory of Pearl Harbor day this year, the Battleship Iowa Amateur Radio Association has received permission for a special cross-band activation, using the active duty callsign “NEPM” for the Battleship Iowa. They will be transmitting outside the ham band (e.g. 14.375 MHz) from 1500-2400 UTC both days, with the operator advising listeners as to where they are listening for replies from within the ham bands. Special QSL cards will be available to anyone succeeding in making a confirmed 2-way contact. More details available at : https://biara.org. We’ll send a reminder when the date gets closer. For now, it’s time to break out the operating manuals to figure out how to set up for this, specific to your HF radio! Should be fun! Wishing good luck to anyone who gives this a try!
Why Contest?
By Tony Starr, K3TS
In the fall of 2015, I was installing a tower and antenna system for a station that I did not yet have. I had been QRT for close to 25 years, and was on my way to getting back on the air. My good friend Tom, N2SR, had given me 40 feet of Rohn 25g tower and got me a good deal on a Mosley Classic 33 antenna, and we were in the process of installing them, when I had to give some thought to what facets of this great hobby that I would be pursuing. At the time, I did not have a working rotator, but Tom had one that needed to be rebuilt. With winter approaching, we went ahead and put the antenna up anyway, figuring that I could always get the rotor up in the spring. Since Tom is an avid contester and DXer, he suggested pointing the antenna toward Europe. I told him to point it West, since at that time, I had no interest in working DX and thought I might like to work toward my WAS. He gave me an odd look, then swung the beam around on the mast, and locked it in place with a muffler clamp.
After the holidays were over, I was thinking that maybe I should start shopping for a used HF transciever to put on the air, when a late visit from Santa (actually it was my cousin Bob, W2RAD) landed a nice clean Kenwood TS-850 in my new "shack". Bob even brought a box full of accessories, cables, and other goodies that I needed to get on the air. I scrambled to borrow a 12 volt power supply, and on January 9, 2016, WA2FZB was back on the ham bands for the first time in a quarter of a century. All of the excitement of my Novice days came rushing back to me, and I even found that in a few weeks I could still copy code poorly at 13 wpm just like I did in my youth!
It only took me six or eight weeks to find out that I really did enjoy working DX after all, and I began to think that I should have let Tom point the antenna toward Europe like he wanted to. But I discovered something else, that stirred up excitement for me even more than the thought of working DX. I heard contesting going on during the weekends, and I wanted in. By then it was late February, the weather was starting to improve, and we were just a couple of weeks away from the ARRL DX SSB contest. Before that contest date came around, I was up on that tower with a pipe wrench turning that antenna toward Europe! I made almost 275 contacts that weekend and I have never looked back. Contesting is now my primary interest within the hobby.
But why contest? Many non-contesters wonder what is the attraction, and some are actually angered by the thought of wall-to-wall signals filling the bands for an entire weekend. But let's face it, contesting is a big part of the hobby, one which has pushed the state of the art for HF radios and antenna systems for decades now. Some of the best operators are contesters, and they are operating some of the best stations around. So just what is the attraction, anyway? Have you ever wondered, or were you curious about why you might want to pursue contesting?
Boiled down to its essence, contesting is just regular ham radio in a super fast, super concentrated form. Many of the things that average hams do during the week are done by contesters on the weekends, but at much faster speeds. Remember that I thought it might be nice to work on my WAS? How about working WAS in twelve hours? I actually did this in the November Sweepstakes last year, and came within one state of doing it again this year. Have you ever wanted to work toward DXCC? Avid DX contesters regularly do it in a weekend, sometimes on more than one band. These are examples of how contesting accelerates normal ham radio pursuits.
Perhaps you have wondered how effective your station is compared to other hams in your area. Contesting gives you a way to directly measure the performance of your station, and to see how much difference certain improvements will make. From one year to the next, you may replace that old tri-bander with the latest, computer designed work of aluminum art. A large increase in your contest scores over last year will go a long way toward convincing you that it was money well spent, even if the XYL does not think so. Contesting serves as a way to measure station performance.
I got my Novice license in 1976, my General in 1977, and my Advanced Class license in 1978, but I never went for my Extra Class back then, because I could not pass the 20 wpm code test that was a requirement in those days. I did get my Extra in 2016, but of course the code requirements had long been gone by then. But I can say with fair certainty that I could pass that 20 wpm test today, if there were one. So why am I much better at CW now than I was 40 years ago? CONTESTING! Specifically, CW contesting. There is nothing that has advanced my code copying ability better than operating in CW contests. The first time after I spent a weekend operating a big CW contest, and I went back to the regular CW bands the next day, I wondered why everyone was sending so slow. Contesting is excellent high speed code practice.
I am sure that you have felt the comeraderie that is an integral part of ham radio. In contesting circles, that comeraderie is magnified, but there is a twist, that comes from the competitive part of contesting. Your adversary may represent the competition, but you need his or her cooperation in order for both of you to succeed. This builds a sort of fraternity within the fraternity of ham radio that is very special, and very real. When you become a regular member of the contesting community you will recognize what I am referring to, and you may come to quickly appreciate it. In my less than two years of active contesting, I feel that I have been welcomed by the contesting community that exists within the main hobby.
Finally, there is the big reason, the obvious one. Contesting IS FUN! You only need to try it to find out for yourself. There are many who have tried out a state QSO party who had never before had an interest in contesting, and found out that they really enjoyed it. These can be a great introduction to contesting for the beginner, though I personally would suggest the North American QSO Parties, which are held in January and August. They are just twelve hours long, and are easy for beginners to jump into.
So why not contesting? Maybe you just need to give it try. But be careful, because it can be addictive! Looking forward to hearing you in the next one. CQ CONTEST!
By Tony Starr, K3TS
In the fall of 2015, I was installing a tower and antenna system for a station that I did not yet have. I had been QRT for close to 25 years, and was on my way to getting back on the air. My good friend Tom, N2SR, had given me 40 feet of Rohn 25g tower and got me a good deal on a Mosley Classic 33 antenna, and we were in the process of installing them, when I had to give some thought to what facets of this great hobby that I would be pursuing. At the time, I did not have a working rotator, but Tom had one that needed to be rebuilt. With winter approaching, we went ahead and put the antenna up anyway, figuring that I could always get the rotor up in the spring. Since Tom is an avid contester and DXer, he suggested pointing the antenna toward Europe. I told him to point it West, since at that time, I had no interest in working DX and thought I might like to work toward my WAS. He gave me an odd look, then swung the beam around on the mast, and locked it in place with a muffler clamp.
After the holidays were over, I was thinking that maybe I should start shopping for a used HF transciever to put on the air, when a late visit from Santa (actually it was my cousin Bob, W2RAD) landed a nice clean Kenwood TS-850 in my new "shack". Bob even brought a box full of accessories, cables, and other goodies that I needed to get on the air. I scrambled to borrow a 12 volt power supply, and on January 9, 2016, WA2FZB was back on the ham bands for the first time in a quarter of a century. All of the excitement of my Novice days came rushing back to me, and I even found that in a few weeks I could still copy code poorly at 13 wpm just like I did in my youth!
It only took me six or eight weeks to find out that I really did enjoy working DX after all, and I began to think that I should have let Tom point the antenna toward Europe like he wanted to. But I discovered something else, that stirred up excitement for me even more than the thought of working DX. I heard contesting going on during the weekends, and I wanted in. By then it was late February, the weather was starting to improve, and we were just a couple of weeks away from the ARRL DX SSB contest. Before that contest date came around, I was up on that tower with a pipe wrench turning that antenna toward Europe! I made almost 275 contacts that weekend and I have never looked back. Contesting is now my primary interest within the hobby.
But why contest? Many non-contesters wonder what is the attraction, and some are actually angered by the thought of wall-to-wall signals filling the bands for an entire weekend. But let's face it, contesting is a big part of the hobby, one which has pushed the state of the art for HF radios and antenna systems for decades now. Some of the best operators are contesters, and they are operating some of the best stations around. So just what is the attraction, anyway? Have you ever wondered, or were you curious about why you might want to pursue contesting?
Boiled down to its essence, contesting is just regular ham radio in a super fast, super concentrated form. Many of the things that average hams do during the week are done by contesters on the weekends, but at much faster speeds. Remember that I thought it might be nice to work on my WAS? How about working WAS in twelve hours? I actually did this in the November Sweepstakes last year, and came within one state of doing it again this year. Have you ever wanted to work toward DXCC? Avid DX contesters regularly do it in a weekend, sometimes on more than one band. These are examples of how contesting accelerates normal ham radio pursuits.
Perhaps you have wondered how effective your station is compared to other hams in your area. Contesting gives you a way to directly measure the performance of your station, and to see how much difference certain improvements will make. From one year to the next, you may replace that old tri-bander with the latest, computer designed work of aluminum art. A large increase in your contest scores over last year will go a long way toward convincing you that it was money well spent, even if the XYL does not think so. Contesting serves as a way to measure station performance.
I got my Novice license in 1976, my General in 1977, and my Advanced Class license in 1978, but I never went for my Extra Class back then, because I could not pass the 20 wpm code test that was a requirement in those days. I did get my Extra in 2016, but of course the code requirements had long been gone by then. But I can say with fair certainty that I could pass that 20 wpm test today, if there were one. So why am I much better at CW now than I was 40 years ago? CONTESTING! Specifically, CW contesting. There is nothing that has advanced my code copying ability better than operating in CW contests. The first time after I spent a weekend operating a big CW contest, and I went back to the regular CW bands the next day, I wondered why everyone was sending so slow. Contesting is excellent high speed code practice.
I am sure that you have felt the comeraderie that is an integral part of ham radio. In contesting circles, that comeraderie is magnified, but there is a twist, that comes from the competitive part of contesting. Your adversary may represent the competition, but you need his or her cooperation in order for both of you to succeed. This builds a sort of fraternity within the fraternity of ham radio that is very special, and very real. When you become a regular member of the contesting community you will recognize what I am referring to, and you may come to quickly appreciate it. In my less than two years of active contesting, I feel that I have been welcomed by the contesting community that exists within the main hobby.
Finally, there is the big reason, the obvious one. Contesting IS FUN! You only need to try it to find out for yourself. There are many who have tried out a state QSO party who had never before had an interest in contesting, and found out that they really enjoyed it. These can be a great introduction to contesting for the beginner, though I personally would suggest the North American QSO Parties, which are held in January and August. They are just twelve hours long, and are easy for beginners to jump into.
So why not contesting? Maybe you just need to give it try. But be careful, because it can be addictive! Looking forward to hearing you in the next one. CQ CONTEST!