Zone Zero podcast

On May 27 and 28, the world will be alive with CW operators vying in CQ Magazine’s WPX – or Weird Prefix – CW contest. It’s one of the biggest radio events of the year, with many thousands of hams competing from hundreds of DXCC entities.

(See some of the DX that will be active this weekend).

That’s the focus of this week’s Zone Zero ham radio contesting podcast.

This is Bud, VA7ST, and I’ll gearing up for my 14th consecutive entry in WPX CW starting at 0000 UTC May 27th – that 5 p.m. Pacific time this Friday. I can hardly wait, no matter what is in store for us.

So let’s dive right in with Episode 6 of Zone Zero.

When NASA trains astronauts, they fly them in big planes along a parabolic trajectory. As they fly up they’re under about 1.8 times normal gravity, but near the peak of that parabola, they are at zero gravity for about 40 seconds before returning to 1.8 times the Earths gravity as the plane descends.

That parabolic path is what our propagation is like over the course of an 11-year solar cycle. And we had a pretty good time of things when we were up near the top – goofing about as we played in weightlessness, the bands wide open around the world at all hours of the day.

But now we pay the price. You have to come back down some time, and boy, are we ever coming down to Earth as 2017 rolls along.

Over the past weekend, for the King of Spain CW contest, conditions were about as bad as they can get.

Not from solar flares or big geomagnetic storms, mind you. Rather, we just lack oomph in the ionosphere. Sure, we saw active geomagnetic conditions, a pretty strong aurora absorbing signals over the pole, and an A-index that hit 21 instead of a nice low 2, which is what it was during CQ WPX CW last year.

But the poor conditions we’re seeing now have less to do with momentary space weather events, and more to do with the natural long-term rhythm of the 11-year solar sunspot cycle.

The sunspots are all but gone, so solar flux is in the 72 range now and it doesn’t go much lower than that in the bottom of a solar sunspot cycle. When flux is low, so are our spirits because the bands just don’t carry our signals like they do in the years of peak sunspot activity.

While 20M is often abuzz with activity on any given Saturday, over the past weekend I didn’t hear much at all. In fact, in the King of Spain contest, during my hours of operation Saturday I managed to make just 22 contact through the day. One was with the King of Spain station, EF0F. And two other European stations made it into the log, but they were the only non-North American signals heard all day. 20M was plain dead – and I’m sure people stayed off the air in droves as a result.

We can be sure they’ll be on the air this coming weekend, though, because CQ WPX CW can pull contesters out of the woodwork like few other events on the calendar.

Still, don’t expect too much from the bands this coming weekend.

Last year’s WPX performance

The solar cycle has diminished so quickly over the past year that we can’t put too much stock in looking at 2016’s results as an indicator of what to expect on the final weekend in May this year.

With that caveat, let’s quickly look at last year, as a recent benchmark.

Checking the official results for 2016, I had just shy of 1.8 million points – with 1,164 contacts and 555 multipliers. The bands were not particularly good, but 15M was still useful. I don’t expect much out of 15M this time out.

On the horizon we have a royal weekend, with His Majesty the King of Spain CW contest, and something for fans of every other major contesting mode.

Let’s get to it – a look ahead at the May 20th and 21st weekend.

Thanks for joining us for Episode 5 of the Zone Zero podcast. This is Bud, VA7ST, fresh off the Volta RTTY DX contest over the past weekend.

Last week, I said 20 million points would be possible in the Volta without even trying very hard. Well, I spent nine hours and finished with a claimed score of 60 million points. That’s triple what I thought I would end up with, and four times my 2016 score. And that’s despite taking off four hours in mid-morning to grocery shopping with my wife. Missed what is often a big part of the day on 20M.

Maybe the bands aren’t as flat as I thought.

The big help this year was a path to Europe on 20M. It wasn’t super strong but it was open, and it stayed open almost the full 24 hours. I made contacts with European stations — at 26 to 29 points per contact — all morning, in the afternoon and well after midnight.

Volta RTTY gives you big scores in a hurry, and even with conditions half-baked as they were this weekend, the Italian-sponsored Volta RTTY did not disappoint.

Coming up on May 20, we have a veritable bounty of smaller but very enjoyable contests to consider – whether you like Phone, CW, RTTY or PSK modes. There’s something for all of us this time out.

His Majesty the King of Spain CW

So much depends on the radio conditions at this part of the solar cycle – we’re often on the knife-edge between not having any useful DX propagation on the higher bands or having workable signals where we need them.

On Saturday, starting at 1200 UTC, we will see the 24-hour Spanish contest – His Majesty the King of Spain CW test – which will be a fun even for most of North America and certainly Europe, as it doesn’t require a totally polar path to work the most valuable multipliers – which are EA stations in Spain.

Having said that, I can report that last year from the North American west coast, I only managed to work 38 stations in 11 Spanish provinces.

You don’t have to restrict yourself to working EA stations, though. You’ll get one point for statins outside Spain, but three points for Spanish stations – and that includes EA6 in the Balearic Islands, and EA8 in the Canary Islands.

Just 38 QSOs more me last year, but the year before it was 216 Qs, which is more like it. There’s a fair amount of activity and lots of stations to work for CW operators.

One of the cool features of this contest is the possibility of working the special station of His Majesty the King of Spain, which will use the callsign EA0.

I worked the royal station last year, and no matter how laid back you think you are, it will give you a real kick to know you’ve made contact with the King of Spain station. I think I bragged about it to my wife for about a week after the contest.

You can check out the rules on the URE website – there’s a link in the show notes for Episode 5 at ZONE.VA7ST.CA.

EU PSK DX and the Aegean RTTY

If you’re not a Morse code operator, you have other options, starting at 1200 UCT Saturday. Both are 24-hour contests as well.

The EU PSK DX contest is for PSK operators – phase-shift keying is a digital mode that many find exciting because it uses such a narrow bandwidth. You will find literally dozens of PSK signals within a couple of kilohertz on 20M for example. Just tune your receiver to 14.070 and watch for the narrow-band signals in your waterfall display.

I won’t go into too much detail right now on how to operate PSK, but a quick pointer to some software is in order.

I use  a few different software packages for PSK...

This week, we’ll take a peek at one of the great RTTY events on the annual calendar – the Volta RTTY DX contest coming up this weekend. If you want to score 100 million points in a weekend, then this one is for you.

We’ll also look at the CQ-M International DX contest for CW and phone operators. So let’s get started….

100 million points in a single contest?

That’s entirely achievable in the Volta RTTY test, sponsored by the  SSB and RTTY Club of COMO and A.R.I. (Associazione Radioamatori Italiani).

This year it’s the 51st running of the Volta RTTY, honoring the Italian discoverer of electricity, Alessandro Volta.

I’ve been in this one every year since 2003. Now, that year I earned 81,000 points and finished 144th overall. Over the years, I have managed to reach the top 25 pack a couple of times, and in 2013 when conditions were at their peak for solar cycle 24, the score I submitted was 299 million.

What a blast this one is, folks.

How do scores get so high? It’s simple. Every contact you make earns points based on a table that gives you more points for contacts in zones farther away from you.

So, if I am in California (in CQ Zone 3) and I work a station in Germany (in Zone 14) we both get 26 points for the contact.

Volta RTTY points table

What countries are in which CQ zones?

That alone can make the contest a whole lot of fun, and encourages the effort it takes to make those DX or long-distance QSOs.

But there’s a whole lot more.

Now, you get to multiply all those contact points times the number of DXCC countries and call areas in Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand and the USA. Now, that makes your score rocket up the charts. But then it gets really interesting.

In Volta RTTY, you then multiply that calculation times the number of contacts you have made. Boom – into the stratosphere.

Last year, even with conditions that were mediocre at best, I managed 155 contacts in 55 countries and call areas – a pitiful performance really – and my claimed score was 16 million points. I put in six hours, which works out to 2.7 million points per hour.

The year before, when propagation was still pretty good, I had 261 contacts and 106 multipliers, and finished with almost 153 million points in 8 hours. That’s more than 19 million points per hour.

It’s pretty neat to see a seven-digit score.

If you go by recent conditions, I think we’re currently experiencing propagation similar to what we saw back in 2008.

That year for Volta RTTY, the solar flux was 67 – lower than it is right now – but the A-index was just 3 with quiet geomagnetic conditions. We might get a bit lucky and have a more flux than that to keep the bands open longer this weekend.

Anyway, in our comparator year of 2008 I landed 16 million points with 180 contacts and 48 countries and call areas – a rather piddly amount, and over the nine years since then participation in RTTY contests has increased dramatically.

Keep in mind that if you work all 10 call areas in the US, Canada and Japan, that’s 30 multipliers – on just one band. You can work ‘em all on each band, too.

If there’s any opening to Europe from where you are (or to North America if you’re in Europe), this weekend could produce 20 million points or more in just a few hours, without even trying too hard.

A quick tip for North American stations – let’s get on 80M during the evening. In most years, there are very few stations running Volta RTTY on 80M and that’s a huge lost opportunity.

It’s entirely possible to work all 10 US call areas there, and another half-dozen Canadian call areas.

Welcome to another post-contest episode of Zone Zero, the podcast for casual but avid ham radio contesters.

It’s late Sunday afternoon, and I’m taking a break from NHL viewing to file my report for the weekend’s contest activity here at VA7ST.

Keep listening for a recap of the 7QP, Indiana QSO Party and New England QSPO Party – and here’s a hint… May 6 and 7 was a pretty darn good weekend to be on the air.

Welcome to episode 3.1, a recap of this weekend’s contest action. This is Bud, VA7ST.

On Saturday and Sunday, we saw three major state QSO parties on the air, offering as many as 421 counties up for grabs across New England states, Indiana, and the entire US Pacific Northwest.

I decided to run low-power this weekend, and it worked out just fine – better than I could have hoped, in fact, as conditions were surprisingly good for a domestic contest weekend.

7QP recap

The 7QP – or the 7th Call Area QSO Party — was a total hoot on Saturday. What a blast I had on all the bands from 20M down to 160M, ending at midnight my local Pacific time.

On 15M, I landed four Qs and four counties across NV, UT and WY which is four more than I figured I’d get by going up there.

I was surprised to so readily work the close-in states on 20M — most years it is tough to work WA, MT and ID until I go to 40M, but no trouble this time.

80M was pretty solid with the triangular array of verticals pointed SE or SW to cover the 7th call area pretty well. The band was strong even to New England, where I kept working stations until the New England QSO Party’s first of two sessions ended at 0500z.

Top band didn’t see much action, though I was there bleating out CQs to get whomever strayed down there in the final hour. Got 8 additional Qs by going to 160M and sure appreciated the calls.

I didn’t really miss running high power with the bands open no nicely, and assume noise wasn’t a big problem at the other end on 80M and 40M.

Managed to beat my previous best score from 2011 (31,374) by a healthy margin, finishing with 173 contacts and 81 counties in the log, for a total claimed score of 42,039 points, which should land me in the top five for out-of-state low-power CW scores.

View the 3830 Scores page for the 7QP

Love the 7QP — thanks to everyone who got on for the day!

Indiana QSO Party

Then there was the Indiana QSO Party, on Satuday as well. This one had some good activity but it wasn’t nearly the rate-fest that the 7th Call Area states mustered up.

With the distance to the midwest not an issue for most bands, the real challenge for Indiana was just being on when the active stations were on.

I ended up with 17 contacts and 10 Indiana counties – most on 20M but two were on 40M before the contest ended at 0300z on Saturday (which is technically on Sunday UTC).

Final claimed score was 340 points.

New England QSO Party

And then there was Sunday.

The New England QSO Party had good activity on the bands Saturday, but my focus on Saturday was the 7QP – you want to max ut your time in thtatone, because it ends at midnight Pacitiv Saturday night, while the New England contest continues all day Sunday, starting its second session at 1300z – or 6 a.m. where I am.

So, at around 7 a.m. I was back on he radio, hunting for New England counties. At first, it was easy to find the active stations, but after about an hour, things got real slow – as I expected.

While New England stations get on in good measure, they just aren’t there in the kinds of numbers that you’ll find in the Florida, 7th Call Area or the biggest of them all, the California QSO Party.

Still,

Bud takes a look at the May 6-7 weekend QSO Parties for the 7th Call Area, Indiana, Delaware and New England states, plus the ARI International DX contest.

April’s behind us and it was a big month for QSO parties, with the Michigan, North Dakota, Ontario and Florida QSO parties.

Not to be outdone, May opens up with a bunch more so if you like to hunt around for counties you’ll be fully engaged this weekend.

This weekend we have one of my favorites — the 7QP, or the 7th Call Area QSO Party — but that’s just one of four state-based events starting Saturday. We have the Indiana, Delaware and New England QSO Parties as well.

So, get out the keyers, microphones — and maps — and go county hunting everyone.

7QP (7th Call Area QSO Party) 

The 7QP will have hams out from across eight states in the 7th call area — that’s Washington, Idaho, Oregon, Nevada, Montana, Wyoming, Utah and Arizona. And that’s a lot of hams and a lot of activity.

It gets underway at 1300 UTC Saturday, May 6, and runs until 0700 UTC on Sunday.

I sure love the 7QP but I never do well in it, because I’m just too close to Washington, Oregon and Idaho, though on 80 meters in the evenings I’m close enough that I can work just about anyone in those states, and it’s great fun to work the counties. And there are a lot of them across the 8 participating states.

I understand that two years ago nearly 1,200 stations in the 7th call area participated. That’s a huge number of stations you can expect to find in the CW, phone and RTTY bands over the 18 hours of the contest.

The exchange in this one is a signal report plus the two-letter state abbreviation followed by the three-letter county abbreviation. So, if you’re working a station in Arizona’s Apache county, that station would send you Alfa Zulu Alfa Papa Hotel — that’s “Arizona Apache.”

I think the hot tip for this one depends on where you are. For me, being so close to the Washington border that I could throw an Okanagan red delicious apple and hit the border, I’ll only manage a few contacts on the higher bands such as 20 meters, but as the day moves into evening I’ll start to hear and be heard on 40 meters and especially on 80 meters. I like racking up multipliers in the close-in states of Washington, Idaho, Oregon and Montana, picking up counties I just couldn’t hear on 20 meters.

For those in states further afield the reverse might be true. You’ll get the best signals on longer hops on 20 meters and maybe have less success on the low bands. But remember 40 meters and 80 meters can be really strong across the continent in the evenings.

So make sure you get on and see what you can hear.

The same advice applies to the other three QSO parties and I’ll quickly run through them right now.

Indiana QSO Party 

The Indiana QSO Party starts at 1500 UTC on Saturday and ends at 0300 hours. The Hoosier DX and Contest Club which sponsors the contest advises that for 2017 county name abbreviations changed. So be aware of that and check the revised list on the Indiana QSO Party website.

Delaware QSO Party 

Then there’s the Delaware QSO Party organized by the First State Amateur Radio Club. This one runs from 1700 UTC on Saturday and ends at 2359 UTC on Sunday. The state abbreviations changed last year so make sure you’re logging software is up to date the exchange to watch wars a single report and county. And if you’re an out-of-state station, send a signal report and your state or province,

On Saturday and Sunday, the bands were ignited by the Florida State QSO Party, or FQP. As the weekend (April 29-30) rolled along I took notes for this post-contest mini-episode 2.1.

Congratulations to the Florida Contest Group for 20 years of this great contest. It’s a fun one with lots of activity from Florida counties.

In this part of the solar cycle, during daylight the only band producing contacts was 20M, so that’s where I devoted my time and attention.

During and after a contest, I will often jot down notes about observations and things I could learn from for next time out. That’s sort of the point of this podcast about contesting. I’m making notes for myself, and I hope they’re useful to others.

I ran 100 watts, leaving the kilowatt amplifier turned off. In fact, out of the six years I’ve entered the Florida QSO Party since 2004, in only one year did I run high power – 2008, which also coincided with my second-highest ever score in this one, about 5,300 points.

It’s interesting to note that in 2011, with 100 watts I beat that score with nearly 7,600 points in the log. The solar cycle had improved that much by 2011, and over the six years since then the peak arrived in 2013 and we’ve slid down the other shoulder into the long, dry valley of solar minimum right now.

This time out, I finished with 38,500 points, 153 contacts and 63 counties in Florida. Time on the air was around 9.5 hours, spread out over many sessions

That might not sound like much, but those are all high-water marks from this station. In fact, it is a 500 percent improvement over my previous best score.

Saturday morning from British Columbia was very tough going into Florida. Stations were generally weak, and we had one-way propagation. They were pointing at the northeast and working the US northeast and Europe so stations in the W7 region got short shrift.

Makes sense to do that – I would, too, if I were in Florida. You have to go where the points are – finding the most fertile ground for your CQs.

Saturday eased a bit on 20M later in the day but it was never easy. 40M was no good from here on Saturday evening or Sunday morning.

But Sunday morning on 20M was fun for a couple of hours after local sunrise – from 6 to 8 a.m. Pacific — with signals from Florida strong for the home stations and workable rover stations moving as fast as I could keep up.

I have to thank N4EEB, who provided me with 20 counties. Other super-active rovers in my log included:

* AD4ES – 13 counties

* K4OJ – 12 counties

* N4KG – 9 counties

* K4ZGB – 9 counties

* W4AN – 8 counties

* NO5W – 8 counties

* N4FP – 6 counties

* K8MR – 6 counties

* KN4Y – 3 counties

* N4DAB – 2 counties

The really active rovers were spread out in a span just above 14.045 – smack-dab in the middle of the “rover window” from 14.040 to 050. I made a note of where we had worked before on 20M, using the band map built into N1MM Logger, and kept coming back to see if any of them had moved into a new county. It was a pretty good feed of new ones through the day.

If I couldn’t hear a rover on his parking frequency, I figured he was up in the phone band or on the move, and made a mental note to come back shortly to see what part of Florida he was going to activate next.

A little patience and persistence really pays off when hunting for rovers in new counties.

There were amazing stretches of rover activity when it was all I could do to keep up with them, they were all hitting new counties so quickly.

Special thanks to NO5W for the excellent rover station activity maps. They really worked well for tracking where a station was and where to expect them next.  These and other great resources are linked from the

Right off the top I want to remind everyone that you can email me at [email protected] with thoughts about the podcast. In each of the shows were going to take a quick look ahead at one or two of the upcoming contests and this week, it’s the Florida State QSO Party.

Out the window I can see green grass growing like a spring weed, the creeks are rising, birds are chirping, the shrubbery is budding out, the dog — Boomer the border collie — is out there with his squeaky ball and a frisbee, and he’s having a great time because spring is back here in the southern part of British Columbia.

Now springtime weekends aren’t really big contest weekends. Other parts of the year are much more contesting-intensive, so right now is the perfect time for getting out in the yard to check out your antennas, looking for things you need to repair after a long, hard winter and just getting the property back in shape for a much-anticipated summer. And I sure hope we have a great summer because we had one heck of a tough winter.

Coming up at the end of April is the Florida QSO Party.

Organized by the Florida Contest Group, this is one of the more well-attended state contests, where everyone around the world turns their antennas toward Florida and tries to work as many stations in as many Florida counties as possible.

The QSO party has two operating periods – the first is a 10-hour stretch from 1600 UTC on Saturday, April 29, to 0159 UTC on Sunday. Then everyone gets to take a break, before getting on for the second operating period, which gets underway at 1200 UTC on April 30, and runs through to 2200 UTC – for those doing the math at home, that’s another 10 hours of operation.

You can operate the entire 20-hour contest if you wish – and many will.

The exchange, if you’re not in Florida, is a signal report and your state, province or DXCC prefix.

Keep in mind that if you’re outside Florida, you only get points for contacting stations in Florida.

It’s a contest for CW Morse code or phone operators, with activity on 40M through 10M – it’s important to note that 160M and 80M aren’t part of this one, folks.

Checking the log for past years, I see that I operated the Florida QSO Party in six previous years – most recently in 2014. My best score was 5,200 points or so, having made 64 contacts with stations in 41 Florida counties. That was in just two and a half hours of operating and I finished something like 12th in Canada that year.

One of the fun things about state QSO parties like this one are the roving stations. These are dedicated – very dedicated – hams who drive around the state activating  county after county.

That means there are often new counties to work as they day goes by. Just when you think you’ve found everyone on the air in a given hour, a rover may show up in a rare county and you’ve got another multiplier in the log!

One strategy I’ve found useful in this and other state QSO parties is to operate in shorter stints on the air, but keep coming back often.

At any given moment, there might be just 10 or 20 Florida stations active on 20M CW, and perhaps another 30 or 40 to be found up in the Phone portion of the band.

Depending on how close or how far you are from Florida you will probably be able to work most of them with relative ease. The in-state stations often call CQ, waiting for the masses of hams to find them. As you tune across the band, listen for swarms of signals on a frequency – the Florida station will likely be there underneath the callers.

After a few minutes of busy activity, you may find you’ve done something called “working out the band,” which means you’ve found all the stations active at a particular time.

But don’t be lulled into complacency.

 

This is a special post-contest update on April 23, 2017.

Oh my goodness, what a terrible weekend on the radio!

Feels like I wasted a couple of days there in the SP International DX teletype and the BARTG 75 RTTY contests.

Didn’t make many contacts in either one of them.

In the previous podcast I mentioned the importance of working all 6 continents. Well, I managed to end up with 3 continents in the log. I did get one European station — an EA station in Spain on 20M by pointing south of the aurora — but that was it from east of the Atlantic ocean.

I found a couple of South American stations and the rest were all North America. I did not hear any KH6 Hawaiian stations or any of the South Pacific ZL/VK stations in New Zealand or Australia, so I was shut out for 3 continents and had only 3 in the log.

It’s about the worst performance I’ve had in the SP DX RTTY contest in many years. That speaks to the conditions of the solar cycle.

We are definitely in the bottom of the trough of solar cycle 24, so that means the next year — perhaps two years — are going to be similar to what we saw this weekend.

There will be moments of happiness and smiles and sunshine, as conditions aren’t always this terrible, but we sure had a look at what the future holds for the next while.

Seeing the numbers

I thought I might give you some indication visually of what the conditions looked like over the weekend, so I went to the orcaDXCC.org website and took some snapshots of the propagation dashboard. By taking a look at the two screen shots from the morning and the afternoon of Saturday, April 23, you get a visual indication of how the solar and geomagnetic numbers changed across the day.

The dashboard, which has been in use since 2010 and compares favorably with real-world conditions, indicates in real-time what the band conditions should be, based on solar flux, sunspot levels, the A-index and K-index, as well as geomagnetic conditions.

At 1520 UTC on Saturday morning, April 22, we were enduring a geomagnetic storm at a minor storm level. The solar flux was 82, driven by 39 sunspots. However the K-index was 6.

Now, it’s nice when the K-index is at 1 or 2, because that means the A-index will be low.

The A-index is a cumulative number that’s based on the K-index over several hours. When the K-index is elevated the A-index will rise and it will rise dramatically if the K-index is elevated to a level like 6, as it was on Saturday.

So conditions really did get worse as the day went on. The aurora level was actually falling during the day, as you’ll see in the screenshots that I’ve included in the show notes for this special episode 1.1.

The aurora had fallen from 8.4 in the morning to 6.7 in the afternoon. That means it had fallen from about 55 gigawatts of power in the ionosphere to about 25 gigawatts of power in the ionosphere.

The big difference through morning to the afternoon – the obvious clue to why the bands got even worse as the day went on — was the soaring A-index.

Remember, the K-index in the morning was 6 and in the afternoon the K-index had fallen to 4.

Now, 4 or 6 are both high numbers for the K-index. And because of the number of hours that K had been elevated, the cumulative A-index went up – from 47 in the morning to 51 in the afternoon.

That really does mean that bands are completely wiped out.

You will get some reasonably useful conditions on short hops across the continent on 20 meters, for example, and that’s what I saw. I was hearing signals — they weren’t strong and there was some fading on the signals between me and Florida and the US southeast; however,

In the first full episode of Zone Zero, Bud looks at the SP DX RTTY and BARTG 75 RTTY contests.

Both events include a continent multiplier, which adds a fun extra dimension as you scour the bands trying to find all six continents – Africa, Europe, Asia, Oceania, North and South America.

If you’re new to the podcast, let me point you to our introductory episode – which I’ve called Episode Zero – as it is a bit of an introduction with info about me and why I started Zone Zero. It’s a good primer for anyone wondering what this is all about.

I want to say a few words out of the gate about location. I am on the West Coast – in the gorgeous southern interior of British Columbia.

To give you an idea of the geographic location, we’re about 60 miles north of the Washington State border. Spokane, Washington, is about 260 miles driving distance to the southeast of us. And Vancouver, BC, is about 240 miles to the west.

Our location on the west side of North America means something to fellow hams from California all the way up to Alaska, as we combat the aurora borealis and its impact on the frequency bands we know and love.

The further east you go, the less you have to rely on the polar path to reach Europe, and the aurora has less impact. From my corner of the world, at least, I have to point directly through the heart of the auroral zone if I want to hear — or be heard in — Europe.

Auroral oval — a donut over the pole

So, imagine the aurora as a great big donut or bagel shape, suspended over the north pole. That donut gets bigger or smaller, depending on geomagnetic conditions – when the sun is storming — spewing a coronal mass ejection or high-speed solar wind at Earth — the aurora gets stronger and bigger, essentially absorbing radio signals so they simply do not pass through.

In this part of the world, if we want to reach Europe, our signals have to go through the near side of the donut, over the polar ice cap, then through the other side of the donut into Europe.

With strong auroral conditions, very little signal gets through – if any.

Now, sometimes, the donut pushes so far south that parts of Northern Europe are actually inside the oval. When that happens, we might see a curious phenomenon known as the Scandinavian Express.

If I point due north even when the aurora numbers are elevated, I can quite often work Scandinavian stations in Sweden and Norway, when I can’t hear anything else at all from Europe. That can add a few multipliers to the log when nobody else is hearing me over the pole – it’s worth a listen even on days of poor propagation.

It’s tough from the west coast, going through both sides of the auroral oval – it is a significant factor in contesting in northern latitudes, and in particular from the west coast of North America because there’s no other option for working Europe. Keep in mind that pointing long-path to Europe means going through the aurora Australis, which is usually just as strong over the south pole.

Over the past weekend, in the YU DX contest – where Yugoslavian stations were the focus from around the world – and in the Manchester Miniera CQMM DX contest sponsored by Brazilian hams – conditions were quite bleak, but we did make some contacts over the pole on 20M or 14 Mhz, and I even made two contacts in Europe on 40M, which from this part of the world can be a challenge during low-sunspot years.

So conditions were bad but not as bad as I expected.

Let’s take a look ahead at the upcoming weekend contests.

This is the opening episode of Zone Zero — a podcast dedicated to ham or amateur radio contests. These are on-the-air radio events in which thousands of hams around the world try to make contact with one another over a weekend, or in a few hours, using their high frequency radio stations.

Along the way they earn points for each contact – and tally up the countries, or states, or continents to see how big their score can get.

Some call it radiosport, others just call it contesting. I’m an avid radio contester, and I assume you are, too. But maybe not – yet.

For those who are curious, stay tuned and we’ll get you hooked on one of the most interesting, engaging and flat-out fun aspects of amateur radio.

You may be wondering why we’ve started a podcast about radio contesting. Well, ham radio has been around for more than 100 years but there’s never really been a show dedicated to the incredibly complex but also unbelievably fun competitive side of our hobby.

It’s about time, don’t you think?

Show resources

* WA7BNM Contest Calendar

As always, for rules and links to just about every contest in the world, check the WA7BNM Contest Calendar. It’s about the best contest listing out there.

* Orca DX and Contest Club website

For other links of use to contesters, check out the Orca DX and Contest Club website — it has a short list of upcoming contests, many mentioned in the Zone Zero podcast, plus a handy propagation dashboard for at-a-glance band conditions.

Building a contest station or a special project?

Find the parts on Amazon and support the podcast, too!