Alien QSL Bureau Announced

Headlines raved this week, perhaps erroneously, that the United Nations was preparing to name an official ambassador to represent earth in preparation of alien contact. While some have guffawed at the idea of an ambassador to aliens, the idea is not without merit. If an alien ship parked itself in orbit around earth and sent out a "Take me to your leader" message, who would we point them toward? While I'm sure there is no shortage of political potentates who would self-nominate themselves for the position, the scramble for supremacy would look like, well, a typical UN meeting . Appointing a nominal talking head to be the face of earth would hide what a bunch of squabbling children we really are for probably at least an hour to two.

Nevertheless, we applaud the UN for being so far thinking, even if they weren't. The collected members of the Lost Island DX Society have never been accused of being deep thinkers, but we know how to ride the coattails of a good idea when we see one. So the LIDS are announcing the establishment of the first Extraterrestrial QSL Bureau to assist The Deserving in getting confirmations for (future) extraterrestrial QSOs. With the price of domestic and international postage going up every year it seems, one can only imagine the postal service's rates for Alpha Centauri. An SASE might bankrupt an individual.

The LIDS Extraterrestrial QSL Bureau will assist in bundling terrestrial QSLs and transporting them to their destination via rocket ship or whatever means is most cost effective. It will likewise receive, sort and distribute incoming QSLs from extraterrestrial locales, making it cost effective for our extraterrestrial ham radio friends to confirm all those W4 cards.

Don't send any envelopes to the LIDS Extraterrestrial QSL Bureau just yet. Details of the bureau operation will be forthcoming after initial Contact.

Pirate Contest

September 19 is the annual Talk Like A Pirate Day. It is a celebration of all things Pirate and Pirate-like by spending the day talking in your best Pirate vernacular. To help fly the skulls and bones (figuratively), the Lost Island DX Society (LIDS), who's logo should be the skull and bones, is sponsoring the first Talk Like A Pirate Radio-Sport Contest, running from 0000Z to 2359Z, September 19.

Pirates be found on all HF bands, and no, we're not talking about that P5 that showed up on 20m. Use phone only, pirate slang is a tough row on cw. Call "Sea-Q ye Scallywags!" or "Ahoy Pirates!" Exchange is Aahhrr-ST and your Pirate name, e.g. Buccaneer Bob, Peg-leg Pete, etc. Romeo, while a right clever pirate name, is not allowed in this contest. If you work any land lubbers, try to clue them in, but if not, just wish the bilge rats "Ahoy" before making the squiffy walk the plank.

Score is the total number of unique pirates worked, work 'em once per band, times the total number of Pirates and landlubbers ye work. Count any beauties ye work double. Triple if they "Aahrrr" you back with a lassie pirate name.

Any Son of a Biscuit Eater found paddin' his log, looking at the cluster, or other sich clever biz'nes will be properly keel hauled and left to Davy Jones' Locker.

Submit all scores and lies in the comments below. Send any pieces of eight to the LIDS, it might help your score. Judging will be by a council of Pirate LIDS and will be as fair an' honest as the Poisson d'Avril contest. Deadline for entry - when we say it is.

A Meeting of the Big Guns

Word has reached the Fi-Ni Report of an unprecedented meeting of the minds among the contestcenti. Several months ago the heads of the Five Families of American contest clubs met in a top-secret location identified only by the code name Aytonday to discuss a dire threat to amateur radio-sport, aka contesting. The Dons and Capos of the five largest contest clubs gathered in secret to address the sluggish Cycle 24 and potential remedies. In attendance were the heads of the Yankee Candle Contest Club (YCCC), the Primarily Virginia Radio Contesters (PVRC), the Funky Radio Contesters (FRC), the Sorta-inda Middle Contesters (SMC), and the No Chance Contest Club (NCCC).

News of the secret meeting was smuggled out via carrier pigeon and NTS traffic nets. The cabal discussed ways to address the sputtering performance of the current Cycle 24 solar cycle in an effort to increase contest activity and scores.

Suggestions ranged from asking for a federal bailout for Big Gun stations to a proposal to inquire of the Louisiana family, uh, contest club if they had connections with the New Orleans voodoo community who might be able to do something to address the problem. It was suggested that the residents of 14.230 would be suitable for human sacrifice if needed. A suggestion to move all the contest stations to the Caribbean was deemed impractical, at least at this point.

The most promising proposal presented was to attempt to resurrect the Palos Verde Sundancers to see if they can breath some life in a asthmatic sun spot cycle. However, last seen, the Sundancers were doing an afternoon review show in a Reno casino for the seniors catching the Early Bird special at the buffet. Its uncertain if they can be coaxed back to their old dancing grounds, especially since it now resides in a gated community that probably won't look kindly on such shenanigans.

Unable to reach a consensus, the heads of the Five Families departed and went in search of amplifier tubes with handles.

Preparing for the Contest Season

Jumping Jehoshaphat! Here it is the first of September. Summer is semi-officially over and we're staring down the barrel of the 2010 Contest Season and the Lost Island DX Society hasn't gotten even one of the summer antenna projects completed. Plans for the pair of rotating 200' towers with stacked mono-banders ran into a snag due to a lack of space and money, so we're now trying to get a tribander up on a rusty old Rohn 20 tower we found in the weeds over on the neighbor's property. The SB-220 is still sitting in pieces at the club station waiting for the magic smoke to be put back into the power supply. Macho Cueso and Leche Dinero have spent the summer touring with a Lucha Libre troupe, so their preparations to dominate the Xtreme division of CQWW have been put behind schedule. It's time to start getting serious.

To get you in the proper frame of mind at least, make sure you've got your stocks of Lost Island DX Society paraphernalia. Whether you're a Big Gun or a Pea Shooter, attitude is everything and the LIDS have plenty of that. Whether its at the next hamfest or club meeting, come out of the closet and proudly let everyone know you're one of the LIDS.

Sunspots or no, the big contests cometh. Let's make some RF!

A Green New One

In the north Pacific, ocean currents spin in an invisible giant whirlpool, bumping up against the land masses east and west, while flirting with the chilly arctic waters to the north, and the warm equatorial waters to the south. This is the North Pacific Gyre. Sounding like a monster from ancient mythology, the North Pacific Gyre is a large system of ocean currents that roar unseen among some of the most beautiful ocean in the world.

But all is not well in the North Pacific Gyre. In the heart of the beast, between Hawaii and California, lies a floating jetsam stream of man-made debris, mostly plastic detritus, a byproduct of the modern world. Estimates are that 225 million pounds of plastic is floating in the Gyre , covering an area as large as Texas, which sounds like a Texas size claim in itself.

A group of Dutch architects have a plan to make lemonade from these petrochemical-based lemons. They are proposing to collect this plastic waste and recycle it to create a habitable floating island out in the Pacific ocean. It will be called Recycled Island. Obviously a lot of thought went into this concept, much more than went into the name, although since the Netherlands is known for its marijuana bars as well as its excellent beers, we can't be entirely sure of the origin of this idea. Nonetheless, this has to be the greenest idea to come along since I ate that baloney sandwich out of the vending machine that was a week out of date.

Recycled Island will include residential housing, agricultural land, beaches, and tourism outlets, all built with recycled plastic as the building material. Think Lego-land without the vibrant primary colors. There is a rumor that either Hedi Montag or Pamela Anderson will be the official spokesperson for Recycled Island and it's (recycled) plastic world.

But while Al Gore is busy calculating the carbon offset for Recycled Island, you're asking what does this have to do with Big Gun DXing and/or contesting? Well, once Recycle Island is afloat, it should most certainly qualify as a New One for DX purposes. Regardless of sovereignty, Recycle Island will qualify based on the separation criteria alone as a new entity, although if Recycle Island is truly free floating, it might prove a little problematic. But as long as it stays within a single ITU or WW zone, that shouldn't be a big problem.

While it might be argued that a floating mat of recycled plastic isn't really a land mass, most reasonable people would recognize Recycled Island as more of an 'entity' than a group of small rocks barely above sea level at high tide that require stilts to keep from getting your tuchas wet while working a pileup with one arm around a mast to keep from falling in the water.

A New One means a land rush of DXers ready to activate an All Time New One as soon as the melted plastic solidifies enough to walk on. There are rumors, the Finns have already reserved a boat to take them there first opportunity. Once it's officially a DXCC entity, it will become a multiplier for all the DX contests as well. This will insure a steady stream of DX tourists to make sure everyone gets that Recycled Island mult. In the spirit of things, I suggest all Recycled Island QSLs be printed on recycled card stock.

If this idea works out, don't be surprised to see more proposals floated for turning plastic waste into plastic islands. The IOTA gang will go nuts for this. Just think, an island DXpedition where you don't have to clean up your trash. Leave it behind so they can extend the beach out a bit. I suggest adding a little dune over there so we can make the beach topless.

UPDATE:

It appears that Honolulu is having trouble finding a spot for all its trash. So Recycle Island has the potential for TONS of more raw material. Or perhaps there can be more than one Recycled Islands. We just have to make sure they are far enough apart to qualify as separate entities. There may be no limit to the number of DXCC 'countries' we can create.

Five-Nine

At least once a year, some DXer or contester re-starts the perennial question of why the signal report exchanged by every DXpedtion or in every contest is always 59. This is a dangerous road of inquiry, for implicit in the question is the expectation that logic and reason should be the basis of amateur radio activities. When it comes to contesting and DXing, logic and reason are qualities rarely in evidence. Tradition is the triumphant rule in most matters, as it is here. All signal reports are 59 because of tradition. But not the tradition which you might think.

Most contesters and DXers assume the 59 signal report is merely a shorthand way of exchanging the required information without having to think . After all, signal reports are subjective, much like interpretations of the speed limit signs on the highway. Readability 5, perfectly readable. Well, that is when the splatter and QRM of the guy running 1.25 kHz above you isn't wiping you out. Signal strength, 9, very strong signal. On a quiet band, if I had a six element monobander at 100' pointing your way, I'm sure you would be very strong.

But the common 59 signal report we exchange today does not derive from the oft quoted RST system of signal reports. To understand why, and where, we got the 59 exchange from, we must dig back into the very earliest days of amateur radio.

It was 1929 and amateurs radio operators were pushing the boundaries of radio technology and DXing. A group of British amateurs decided to sponsor a test to see which amateur stations could work the farthest and most DX. Today, we would call this a DX contest, but this was before such organized events were conceived.

The British group decided that to prove a valid contact had been made, they would assign each station participating in the test a unique number that they would exchange with each station they contacted, which would then be reported to validate the contact.

A Welsh amateur radio operator by the name of Ergryad ap Tywysog was very keen on proving his station was the best in the British Isles. Ergryad has assembled a monstrous AM station that put out a dominant signal, so he jumped into the test full bore.

Unfortunately, the organizers of the DX test had done a good job of publicizing the event, but had failed to adequately communicate the need to obtain a unique number for each station. Thus, there was some chaos on how the test was supposed to work. Ergryad understood the rules and had gotten his unique identifier number. But Ergryad had a bad habit of randomly switching between speaking English and Welsh, and often mixed the two, which made him difficult to understand. During the test, Ergryad, who had been assigned the number 253, would give his exchange as, "Fi nifer two-fi-tree." In Welsh, "Fi nifer" means "my number".

Needless to say, not many other radio amateurs of the day understood or spoke Welsh. Ergryad's signal was so strong though, he worked almost all the stations on the air, both in Europe and in North America. The other amateurs, many not knowing how the DX test was supposed to work, assumed that Ergryad was saying "Five-Nine Two-Five-Three" just with a thick Welsh accent, and assumed that the five-nine was a signal report and the two-five-three was a serial number. So they quickly adopted the format and began making DX contacts.

After the DX test ended, the sponsoring group realized what had happened. Rather than try and correct the very widespread misunderstanding, they adopted the new format. It proved so popular, that other groups began to adopt it for tests they sponsored. By the time the concept of organizing a formal radio contest developed, the Five-Nine 'signal report' was ingrained among DXers. It wasn't until the mid- to late-60's that high speed phone operators began to realize that careful enunciation was slowing down their rates and hurting them competitively and they developed the technique of giving the signal report as "Fi-Ni", which is actually very close to Ergryad's original exchange. It also laid the foundation for the future founding of the Lost Island DX Society and it's Fi-Ni Report.

Keeping Us Straight

It's 0001Z Monday morning. Around the world, contesters are rejoicing in joy or sighing in relief as they end another weekend of contesting. The contest is over.

But not for a dedicated group amateurs intent on insuring all participants in the contest played fair. The Contest Score Investigators (CSI) are gearing up to investigate evidence of cheating by radio-sport competitors. They will spend countless hours in the succeeding weeks, perhaps months, scouring logs of cluster spots, and audio recordings looking for evidence of rule infractions, whether those of the station's country radio rules or those of the contest sponsor's. This dedicated team committed to the strict rule of law, will continue even after the official results of the contest have been release, meaning their work may go on for more than a year. In contests where competitor's logs are released publicly, the CSI team will dissect the individual logs of competitors suspected of cheating, looking for evidence. Instead of spending hours in front of a radio, the CSI team members spends them in front of a computer screen, running statistical analyses and looking for patterns of suspicious behavior in IP trace routes.

The CSI are not paid by the hour, administrative lackeys, tiny cogs in the giant machinery of justice. No, their mission is entirely self-appointed. No contest sponsor asks for their assistance policing the sport of radio contesting. Their findings carry no weight, except in the court of public opinion, usually on the CQ-Contest reflector. Are their findings anticipated for their insight? Hardly. Almost every report from a CSI analysis results in additional, conflicting analysis from other CSIs. Rarely is a consensus reached or action taken as a result of any CSI analysis. Discussions, or arguments, about them rage for months after the contest or even the final results. While the CSI analysts slice and dice the data from the last big contest, the competitors have moved on and operated several more. Meaning that the CSI's work will never be done.

Spies Among Us

No, not those silly undercover UA sleepers! Someone has been secretly recording some of the LIDS it seems. The pictures are a little fuzzy, but that just might be Cousin QRM in the leopard skin skirt. Don't ask, we won't tell. Keep an eye out for this K3NG character.

Open vs Closed

Commentary by Cousin QRM

The recent tiff between the German and the Spaniard HQ stations regarding last year's I-R-R-U Contest (motto: Are You? I Are) has dredged up a new re-occurring theme among the contestrati – Open versus Closed Logs. We haven't quite figured out where in the schedule the Open Log debate should fit on CQ-Contest, so its occurrence is still somewhat random.

In this instance, the Spanish HQ team alleged some definitely unkosher behavior occurring in the German HQ team's log after a review of said log. The German's did not appreciate being the focus of this new Inquisition and denied their team did anything wrong. Besides, they couldn't be responsible for the actions of some over-zealous fellow countrymen, and anyway, the Spaniard's log didn't look exactly squeaky clean, either.

One of the outgrowths of this controversy has been a revival of the arguments pro and con regarding making contest logs open to all gawkers. The Open Log contingent argue that contest sponsors should make all logs available for inspection, since there are no secrets to contesting except keep your butt in the chair and work stations, and if you don't want your logs open, just what are you hiding?

The Closed Log contingent point out that the latter argument was used very effectively back in the 1950's by one Senator Joseph McCarthy, a reference that probably loses resonance outside of North America. Some of the Closed Log coterie argue that there ARE secrets in their logs, and they have nothing to do with phony Qs or rubber clocking. Besides, forcing a contester to open his log for all to see violates his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, another reference that loses resonance outside of the North American borders.

Cousin QRM has thoughtfully weighed the points of both sides in deciding where he and the LIDS should come down on this controversy. After careful deliberation, Cousin QRM has decided to side with the Closed Log crowd. It is far too risky that sneaky competitors will glean critical information from a careful analysis of the LIDS logs. Our hard won competitive knowledge, skills and advantages could be easily erased by clever bit-shifters.

In fact, now that this threat has been brought to our attention, we're getting down right paranoid. How do know we can trust the contest sponsors with our log? Once they finish tabulating our score, what else are they going to do with that log? Hey, the log checkers are contesters, too. Now, I don't want to cast aspersions on the many honest, hard working volunteers who do the log checking for all the contests we enjoy. But it only takes one bad apple to spoil the whole bunch, girl, at least according to the Jackson 5. Again, we just can't take that chance.

A contester can be hoisted upon his own petard with an open log, too, as demonstrated by last year's CQWW logs which showed certain Big Guns operating outside of their 160m band allocations. Now, we're all allowed a mistake or two getting too close to a band edge. Just because it wasn't noticed for over two hours during a run doesn't mean it wasn't an honest mistake. Right?

We're also getting worried about those QSL cards we receive following each contest. Could they, perhaps, be a surreptitious way to finagle key portions of our logs out of us? What a brilliant strategy! And all these years we thought we were helping out WAS and county hunting paper chasers. Now, we see the real motive. This goes far deeper than anyone could imagine.

So, effective immediately, Cousin QRM and the LIDS will not be submitting logs for ANY contest, anymore. No logs, no LOTW uploads, no QSLs. Nuthing! No matter how much K5ZD begs, we're not sending in our logs. That doesn't mean we're giving up contesting. Not at all. We'll still be in their fighting just as hard as ever, but we won't send in our logs. Just can't take the chance the wrong eyes might see our award winning secrets. It's a shame too. I'm pretty sure this is the year we will win Multi-Multi on both modes of CQWW. Oh well, guess you'll just have to take our word for it when we announce our claimed score.

Say Cue Feel Day

Next weekend, North American amateur radio operators will crawl from their basement and attic radio rooms, known as 'shacks', and face the bright light of day and oppressive heat of summer to take their radios and antennas to open fields and picnic shelters everywhere to participate in the annual Feel Day.

Feel Day is an exercise to simulate how radio amateurs would function in an emergency situation, such as an extended Internet outage, and would have to actually revert back to the fundamentals of amateur radio, that is, actually using radios. For many amateurs, this is the only time of the year that their monitor glow tan is supplemented through natural means. Sans the modern conveniences of computer control and Internet spotting networks, they are forced to exercise the age old skills of grasping a tuning knob, tuning through a band and listening to signals. These ancient skills have most acutely atrophied among the modern DX'ers and contesters who have perfected the cluster based 'click and shoot' skills so prevalent today. But fortunately, the hand position of gripping a round tuning knob is not significantly different from that used to grip a computer mouse. Although the immobility of the tuning knob has causes some confusion, most mouse-based radio amateurs quickly adapt. Users of trackballs have been reported to have significantly more difficulty adapting to the tuning knob.

Many amateurs find the exercise of ancient skills tiresome and tedious. But they can find relief and comfort in another of Feel Day's tradition - the Feel Day feast. After a grueling hour or two in front of a radio, the weary amateur can retire to the refuge of culinary delights. While the extent of Feel Day feasting varies by group, whether it is a well stocked cooler or an elaborate grilled buffet, one can be certain that it will not include any items made with tofu or with the words 'low fat' on it's label. Some amateurs come to Feel Day and never touch a radio the entire time, but plant themselves at the food tent for the duration.

Whether it's dusting the cobwebs off a J-47 key or dusting off a bowl of campfire chili, Feel Day has something for all radio amateurs. While many spend months planning and anticipating it, after 24 hours outdoors in June battling bugs and Murphy, they understand why it's only done once a year.