Hello Ventura County Hams,
I really don’t want to risk angering the propagation gods, but… are HF conditions starting to
slowly get better? This weekend the MUF over North America was above 30 MHz for a
substantial amount of time, and I actually made a handful of CW contacts on 10m! It really felt
like foreign territory after so many months of not venturing up that high. My signal was getting
into Europe on 20m multiple times during the day and night, and 15m seemed strong too. I’m
keeping my fingers and toes crossed that this is a sustained trend and not a one-off.
This month’s club presentation is by Cory Gibson, W3JL, on near vertical incidence skywave
(NVIS) propagation. NVIS is important for short-distance HF communications, which is vital for
ARES/ACS operations during potential emergencies. Which reminds me: there is a new Santa
Barbara Section net on 80m every Tuesday night at 20:00 local time (3.987 MHz +/-). After
hearing Cory’s presentation, maybe it will encourage some of you to try getting a low 80m
dipole in the air to participate in this net.
Contest season is coming up, and some of you may know that this is currently my favorite part
of the hobby. There are two big HF contests this month:
The Worked All Europe SSB contest is the weekend of September 13 th , and it’s a good
opportunity to find some European DX on the air. I would suggest doing a little research on this
one beforehand, as the optional QTC exchange can be confusing the first couple of times you
hear it. QTC traffic makes this contest pretty unique and interesting. Here are a couple of videos
for more info:
Q5 Ham Radio – What is a QTC? Preparing for Worked all Europe DX
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eN6GNxWduwI
K5YVY – Everything to Know about QTC Traffic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqlxklOGi9Y
The CQ WW RTTY contest is the weekend of September 27 th . For those who already operate
digital modes, getting your rig and computer set up for RTTY should be easy, at least easier than
it was for me. Man, who would have thought that getting my radio and computer to talk to
each other could be so frustrating! I practiced a little RTTY contesting last month in a smaller
contest and it was a lot of fun, so I’m looking forward to my first big RTTY experience!
However, the real contesting season for me starts with the California QSO Party (CQP), and it’s
less than four weeks away! It takes place the weekend of October 4 th , so it’s time to start
thinking about your level of participation. This is a great opportunity to call CQ and actually
have operators respond, especially for those of you who have never tried that side of
contesting before. I will send out a CQP-specific primer the week of the contest with more
information.
For a comprehensive list of all contests big and small, HF or VHF/UHF, check out
https://www.contestcalendar.com.
Hope to hear you on the air soon!
73,
Jacques KN6VQ
