K5ZD announcements, rules

2009 WPX Contest Rules now Available

The rules for the 2009 CQ WPX Contest are now available. See http://www.cqwpx.com/rules.htm

There are changes throughout the rules so participants are encouraged to read the complete rules carefully. Many of the changes were to align with similar rules in the CQ WW Contest or to clarify administrative details. There is no change to the scoring.

Highlights of the changes include:

  • Revised Terms of Competition specify maximum power limits, prohibition against self spotting, and entry location of remote stations.
  • Operator categories have been edited to match CQ WW format. There have been no change in the actual categories, only in the text description of each. Use of skimmer places an entrant in the assisted or multi-operator category.
  • Overlay categories (tribander/wires and rookie) have been clarified to apply only to single operator high and low power entrants.
  • The text of the club competition rule is now in alignment with the CQ WW Contest.
  • Log submission instructions now state
    • how multi-single and multi-two stations should specify which transmitter made each QSO
    • single band entrants are requested to include all contacts made on other bands
    • US stations should include the LOCATION: field in the Cabrillo header of their log
  • Disqualification criteria is now same as CQ WW Contest.
  • The entry declaration permits the submitted log to be made public.

Most of the changes are administrative and should have little impact on the competitive and fun aspects of the contest. We look forward to more sunspots and another record year of participation in the 2009 WPX contests.

Look for CQ WPX 2008 Contest results in the January (SSB) and March (CW) issues of CQ Magazine.

K5ZD announcements

Plaque sponsors wanted

How would you feel to win world high in a major contest and not get a plaque for your wall?

I am putting the finishing touches on the CQ WPX CW results (to appear in March 2009 CQ Magazine). I notice there are a number of high profile categories that do not have plaques sponsored. If you are interested and can make arrangements with Doug, K1DG, by December 15, I can still include your plaque in the magazine results (and you can make some worthy contester very happy). Cost of donating a plaque is $50 and can be paid by Paypal. Contact Doug by email to k1dg@cqwpx.com.

Some of the categories available include:

  • World QRP
  • World 21 MHz
  • World 7 MHz
  • World 1.8 MHz
  • High SOAB score in Africa
  • High SOAB score in North America
  • USA 7 MHz
  • USA 3.5 MHz
  • Multi-single USA
  • Multi-single Europe
  • Multi-two Europe
  • Multi-multi Europe

Full list at http://www.cqwpx.com/plaques.htm#CW

K5ZD commentary

Creating a standard list of club names

As part of the ongoing effort to automate the log checking process for the CQ WPX Contest, one of the big issues has been the variety of club names, spellings, and abbreviations that appear in the Cabrillo files. It literally takes hours to try to go through the listings and do the research to assign each log to the correct club.

There are two things that would greatly simplify this part of the process:

  • Entrants would spell out their complete club name (no acronyms)
  • Club names would be spelled out in a consistent way

To encourage this help from contest entrants, I have begun development of an “official” list of contest club names. You can view the list at http://www.cqwpx.com/clubnames.htm

Please take a moment to find your club on the list and let me know if there are any errors or there is a more accepted spelling of the club name. The goal is to have the names on the list be what the club members want to use in their log and how they want the club name to appear in the magazine results.

To further encourage the use of the full club names, the log submission robot will start comparing the club names to those on this list. If a match is not found, the submitter will receive a warning message in the acknolwedgement email. We are hoping this will remind people to help us by resubmitting with the correct name.

No log will be rejected if the club name does not match. There are hundreds of clubs around the world that may not be on the list and we welcome club score submissions from any of them. The official list is for those clubs that expect to submit 3 or more entries to the contest and be eligible for inclusion in the magazine results. 

The one exception that will not be handled by the club list is for multi-op entries that want to apply their score to more than one club.  In these cases, please indicate the club names and percentage of the score that should go to each club.  You will receive the warning message, but don’t worry, we will manually handle these few logs when we compile the final club scores.  Remember, only multi-op entries can apply their score to more than one club based on the club membership of the operators that participated.