Category: commentary

I spent two hours today determining who will win the 49 sponsored trophies for the 2009 WPX SSB Contest. There are a lot of great ops who fought their way to the top of their category or region!

At the same time, I couldn’t help but notice how weighted the trophy program is toward the High Power entrants. Only 4 trophies were awarded to Low Power entries! That seems unfair since Low Power makes up 2100 of the 4086 logs received.

There’s still time to balance things out. Take a peek at http://www.cqwpx.com/plaques.htm and see if there is an unsponsored award you would be interested in taking on. Or suggest a new one. Check out both SSB and CW.

Send your requests or suggestions to the award meister for the WPX SSB/CW Contests – Doug, K1DG. k1dg@cqwpx.com

As always, thanks to everyone who participated and helped make the WPX such a fun contest.

We would like to believe that all contesters are very conscientious in preparing their log submissions.  They would carefully review the header fields of their Cabrillo log and make sure everything is exactly as it should be.  Many do, but some do not.

This leaves the log checker with a dilemma.  Do we correct the possible mistakes in the header fields? Or do we allow the errors to flow into the results and then hear the complaints from the participants?  We could always point back to the log submission and show the category mistake was theirs, but this may impact the results in a category and it doesn’t create perfect results in the magazine.

In the 2009 WPX SSB contest, there were 56 stations that submitted their log in the ALL band category, yet all of their QSOs were made on a single band.  There is nothing in the rules that prevent this.  But, we have to wonder if submitting as ALL was a mistake or by intent…

We have decided that for any single operator log where all QSOs are made on a single band, we will change the category of that log to single band.  E.g., if all QSOs are made on 40 meters, we will change the log to CATEGORY-BAND: 40M. 

The logic is this.  The log meets all the requirements for being entered as single band. There is no reason that this fact should not be acknowledged in the results. Entering in the single band category often gives the score a higher place in the results (or a certificate) than when competing with the all band scores.

The logs received page will be updated as we make these changes.

If you really really want your single band log to be entered in the ALL band category, make a note in the SOAPBOX comments, or send an email to director@cqwpx.com.

Note: If you make QSOs on multiple bands you can still enter for a single band.  Include ALL of your QSOs in the log and then make sure the CATEGORY-BAND field is set to the single band you want to enter. We will only count the QSOs on the selected band for your score.

Everyone who submits an electronic log for the WPX Contest must eventually ‘dance with the robot.’  That’s where you email your log to ssb@cqwpx.com or cw@cqwpx.com.  The robot happily receives your log, checks it for key information, and then replies with a confirmation.  Or, in some cases, it replies with a rejection and begins your dance. You resubmit your log with corrections and the process is repeated.

We try very hard to make the robot response messages as simple and clear as possible.  99% of you do read them and resubmit your log with the incomplete items corrected.  For those who don’t, K1AR and I keep an eye on the robot inbox and rescue these logs (or email you for the missing info).  Its a great system and we owe N5KO a great deal of appreciation for setting it up (for all CQ and ARRL contests)!

As we near conclusion of another year of WPX SSB/CW log submissions, I want to report on two changes we made to the robot for the WPX this year and how they have helped save time and prevent errors. 

The first change was to add new checking on the LOCATION field for USA/Canada entries. Since the contest reports results and issues certificates based on call areas, we need a way to know what call area you were actually operating from.  The mailing address doesn’t always tell the story!  The robot checks any USA/Canada entry and makes sure it has a valid ARRL Section or State/Province in the LOCATION field (see http://www.cqwpx.com/locations.htm for the list of allowed values).  This enables the log checking software to set the call area your score is reported in.  You are responsible for entering this correctly!

The second change was to add checking on club names.  The robot looks at the text in the CLUB field and checks it for an exact match against a list of known clubs (see http://www.cqwpx.com/clubnames.htm for the list).  This list is maintained by F6BEE (f6bee@cqwpx.com) and is shared by the CQ WW and WPX Contests.  If your club name doesn’t match what is on the list, a warning message is included in the robot response message. THE LOG IS STILL ACCEPTED so there is no need to panic if your club isn’t on the list. 

Why is this a big deal?  When I started as Director last year, I blogged about the club name problem and my amazement at the number of different club spellings and abbreviations that were in use. I probably spent 60-80 hours just sorting out club names and compiling the club scores. Due to language issues, there were many cases where it was impossible to match the club names with the abbreviations.  This issue has practially disappeared from the logs this year.

Thanks for dancing with the robot and submitting a Cabrillo log that includes all of the information we need to process your log.  This simple act by each of you saves us many hours over the course of log checking and producing the results.  Since everything is highly automated, the better the input information, the less chance for errors to creep into the results.

As of today, we have received 4,084 logs for WPX SSB and 3,551 for WPX CW.  Both are new records!  Thanks again to each of you for participating and submitting your logs.