Crossing the Streams, uh, Threads

In the wake of the CQWW phone weekend, the contest reflector is awash in the usual post-game chatter. There are however, two particular threads that are worrisome.

The first is a discussion thread about the, umm, extremes some ops go to in order to maintain a full 48-hours of butt-in-chair (BIC) time. Nature calls us all, but we don't all get up to answer, apparently.

The other is a discussion thread about self-spotting.

My fear is that these threads will inevitably merge.

The Big Event - Round One

With zero hour fast approaching, all the LIDS are making last minute preparations for CQWW - The Phone Edition.

Cousin QRM is pouting that he didn't get selected by the CQWW contest committee for a station inspection.

Macho Cuesew and Leche Dinero are squirreled away in their secret lairs trying to desperately steal enough network bandwidth to operate their worldwide network of remote receivers.

Rusty Key is practicing his vocal exercises to keep his voice in shape for an entire weekend of screaming into his trusty D-104.

The LIDS will all sit out the first minute of the contest in memory of C6APR.

It's almost time, fellows. Join the LIDS and fire up the filaments, point the beam somewhere, strap in and enjoy the show. You're all Fi-Ni!

Tragedy Strikes C6APR CQWW Team

The Fi-Ni Report attempts to find the humor in our shared obsession we call radio-sport. Today, there is no humor, only sorrow as we mourn the tragic deaths of four of our Big Gun brethren. Yesterday W2GJ, K3IXD, W3PP, and K4QO were killed when their plane crashed on takeoff from the Summerville, SC airport. The four were headed to Bermuda to operate as C6APR for the CQWW phone contest this weekend.

Whether we knew them personally or just from the contacts on the air, the contesting and DXing communities have suffered a loss. We mourn for the families and friends and share their grief. At 0000Z Saturday the bands will explode with activity as usual, but there will be a hole in the bands where C6APR should be. We pray that they are now where the bands are always open, even the long path, and all the signals really are 59.

You can read a recent article about the C6APR operation here.

CQWW Team Competition

The Lost Island DX Society is putting together a pair of teams for the Team Competition of CQWW.

In light of the recent rule changes, we will assemble two teams - team one will the Yellow Cards, team two will be the Red Cards.

Sign up today for your choice of team! Just leave a comment below.

UP5LID DXpedition Report

The first DXpedition by LIDS for LIDS, working all LIDS is now history. The Lost Island DX Society sponsored not one, but two DXpeditions back in August. What? You didn't know? Two groups of LIDS headed out to activate special calls; one to Kazakhstan to operate UP5LID and one to Sri Lanka to operate 4Q2LID.

The UP5LID group arrived at the airport bright and early for departure, loaded down with gear, only to meet their first obstacle. The airlines had no reservations for us. Turns out the package deal we got from Madoff-Ponzi Travel really was too good to be true. With the expedition threatened to end before it began, the group pooled their traveler's checks and maxed out their credit cards and kited a few checks to book new flights. As our travel arrangements were last minute, the routing was not the most direct. Somehow we managed to fly through Atlanta and Newark. Twice. And that was just on the flight out.

After a torturous 72 hours of air travel, over half spent in various airports bars to pass the time, we managed to arrive in beautiful Kazakhstan. Our computer/logging guru, Rusty Key, managed to be in country a full ten minutes before offending our hosts by observing that the Kazakh people were nothing like Borat. Rusty is a phone only operator and not the sharpest tack in the crew, but he does know his way around logging software, so we tolerate him. Rusty claims to be a distant relative of Francis Scott Key, author of the Star Spangled Banner, our national anthem and one of the most unsingable songs of all time. Rusty fancies himself a songwriter as well and we have to suffer his country ballads such as "Mommas don't let you babies grow up to be QRPers" and "Rhinestone Contesters".

Having spent all of our money buying new airplane tickets, we didn't have much money left for accommodations, since those arrangements were also made by Madoff-Ponzi Travel. Fortunately we found a very helpful cab driver named Nockmore who directed us to a very affordable bed and breakfast run by his sister and her husband. Only there were no beds, just mats on the floor, and no breakfast either. But, hey, we were here for DXing, not sleeping. Or eating.

We starting setting up our station in Nockmore's sister's garden. Since all our money had gone to buy new plane tickets, we didn't have money left to afford the extra baggage charges to bring the beams and amplifiers. But we did bring along some wire to make dipoles from. Unfortunately, we managed to leave behind the coax, too. Fortunately, zip cord is pretty universal and can be pressed into service as a feedline when needed.

With a dipole in the air and the rig ready to go, we were ready to put UP5LID on the air. That was when Rusty discovered we had also managed to leave the microphone behind, so he was SOL for the DXpedition, but the rest of us could still operate cw.

When UP5LID came on the air, it certainly stirred up a lot of excitement. We generated lots of on-air activity, but few of them seemed to be trying to work us. In fact, some of the responses we got when we called "CQ UP5LID "were down right rude. The pileups we did generate were exciting . The JA's were the most unruly, while the Europeans were gentlemanly and well behaved. Did I happen to mention that Kazakh vodka is amazing cheap and plentiful?

With the delays caused by our travel snafus, we had to cut our operating time short by several days. But when we shut down the UP5LID operation, we were happy with all the calls we had put in the log, and hopefully gave many a new one.

The circuitous routing to get to Kazakhstan was repeated on our return flights. But as luck would have it, we had a long layover in Morocco, which would allow us to play tourist for a few hours. For security sake, we had to carry all of our gear with us, which made things a little awkward, but we still managed to get out and see a few interesting sites.

During our site seeing trip, our log master, Rusty Key, made the mistake of eating some shawarma from a street vendor. About thirty minutes later, Rusty was in severe intestinal distress. In a fit of panic, he traded his laptop for a half roll of scratchy toilet paper. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

Unfortunately, Rusty's laptop contained all of the expedition logs. Our QSL manager was all prepared to order cards and ready to upload the logs to LoTW as soon as we got back, but unfortunately we have no other records to QSL from. If someone is passing through Morocco and finds a fellow named Murkat with a nice laptop, he might be able to confirm a UP5LID QSO for you.

We have not heard back from the 4Q2LID crew, but last reports sounded like they were doing well. The last contact we had from them, they had managed to hook up with what I assume is some sort of Sri Lankan baseball team, as their name was the Tamil Tigers. The Tigers must be in spring training since the LIDS crew said they were staying at the Tiger's camp. Actually, they said they were "being held" at the Tiger's camp, but I assume the message was garbled during transmission. They are a little overdue returning, but we assume they have had travel difficulties similar to the UP5LID team. When they return, we'll share all the exciting details with the Fi-Ni Report.

Full Disclosure

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has released new guidelines governing endorsements and testimonials which include blogs for the first time. Under the new rules, blogs that do not disclose "material connections" with the products they advertise or endorse can face fines of up to $11,000. What are "material connections"? Getting stuff for free or getting compensated for the endorsement.

To insure that we are in compliance with the new FTC rules, the Fi-Ni Report would like to disclose that, yes, we have received and used Dr. DX's Antenna Wax and Sunspot Salve, as well as McElroy's Key Grease. However, we have received no discernable benefit from any of these products. So take that as you will.

What stylish LIDS look like

Doing what they do best....

Age Surveys

Recently, CQ Magazine contest column editor and all around Big Gun, K1AR reported on an age survey of contesters. Although this was an admittedly unscientific survey, the results were pretty much what we all know - contesters are getting older. The average age for American contesters was 55; the average for European contesters was 45 years of age.

This has resulted in another round of collective hand wringing about how to get more youth into amateur radio in general and contesting specifically. Worthy goals, but we'll leave it to mo' smarter folks than us to figure out how.

From our vantage point here at Lost Island, we've taken a different perspective on the aging of our fellow amateurs. (Who woulda thunk?)

Age is a numerical counting of the time we've spent on this spinning rock making laps around Ol' Sol waiting for sunspots to open up 10 and 15 meters again. They say a man is only as old as the woman he feels, but we try to keep this a family friendly blog so we won't pursue that line of thinking.

Nevertheless, our point is that numerical age is but one way of counting. Perhaps a more important measure of a man, and a woman, is a measure of their maturity and growth as a human being.

With this in mind, we decided to conduct our own highly unscientific survey of our fellow amateurs by turning on the radio and seeing the current state of ham radio, judged through its own medium.

After spending an evening listening to the pileups for FT5GA, we tuned down to the upper ends of 40m and 75m SSB.

The good news is that the reported aging of amateur radio appears to be premature.

Our best guess is that the average age of the operators we heard on the air is about four.

Interview with a Privately Disqualified Contester

The intrepid reporter over at radio-sport.net has provided excellent coverage of the disqualifications and controversy around the CQWW results for 2008. One of the more troublesome aspects of the CQWW scoring is the rumored "private disqualifications" of certain operators. Certain operator scores posted on 3830 or in the CQWW log database mysteriously disappear from the final results. While some instances might be attributable to human error, others may not be, as some high profile entries have been known to disappear. Officials with the CQWW Contest Committee have to date refused comment.

The Fi-Ni Report has exclusively managed to locate a contester who claims to have actually been privately disqualified from the CQWW contest and is willing to go on the record with his story, as long as his identity is protected. We will refer to him only as Deep Key. We have no way of confirming the details of Deep Key's story, but leave it up the reader to decide if he is believable.

Deep Key is an experienced contester who has entered the major contests for many years. He is not a Big Gun and does not consistently appear in the Top Ten Boxes. Two years ago Deep Key had an exceptionally good year in the CQWW CW contest and submitted his score with hopes of perhaps earning a certificate.

"I thought I ran a clean contest, really I did," claims Deep Key. He submitted his score as usual and forgot about it knowing the results would be out in the usual eleven and one-half months time frame.

"One night in June, I went outside in the dark to switch the matching section on my vertical over from 160m to 80m. It was dark out, no moon. Suddenly I was jumped from behind. Someone threw a bag over my head and I was hustled into a van. No one said anything. I was held down on the floor and my hands tied behind my back. We drove for what seemed like hours, but I really couldn't tell you how long it was."

Scared for his life, Deep Key expected the worst. Finally, the van stopped and he was hustled into a building, the bag still over his head.

"When they pulled the bag off, I was seated in a darkened room with a single overhead light above me shining in my face. In front of me was a table with three people seated at it. All of them had on black robes with hoods and they all wore black masks and had black gloves on their hands. It was just like some star chamber movie set or something."

"No one would talk to me. The people at the table each had a paddle in front of them and they would send me questions in CW. They kept asking if I had used packet during the contest. I told them no, but they kept asking. They said they had proof I was cheating with packet. I kept denying it. It was nerve wracking. One of the guy's fist was so bad, I could barely understand him. He had this weird spacing thing going on. I had to keep asking for repeats. Another claimed that was proof I was a cheater since I couldn't copy CW very well. They keep pounding away at me, all sending on top of one another, over and over again accusing me of cheating with packet."

"Finally, I couldn't take it anymore and I broke. I told them, yes, I looked at the packet cluster. I would have done anything to get them to stop. But I didn't cheat. I just wanted it to stop."

"After I confessed, they told me that I would be privately disqualified. My score would just disappear. They said if I ever told anyone about it something much worse would happen to me. Someone mentioned pins in the coax."

"The next thing I knew, someone threw the bag back over my head and I was hustled back out to the van. Again, no one said a word to me as we drove. The next thing I know, the van screeches to a halt and someone pushes me out the door. I hit the ground hard as the van sped away. I picked myself up and took off the hood. I was standing in front of my own house and the sun was just coming up."

"I've never told anyone about what happened that night, until now. I still operate the CQWW contests, but I haven't sent in a log since then. I can't even think about looking at the packet cluster, not even during the week when not contesting. It's really hurt my DXing. Honestly, I didn't cheat. OK, maybe during one of my breaks I glanced at the cluster briefly, but that was just to check the propagation conditions, honest!"

Deep Key has the look of a broken man. His eyes wander constantly, looking at nothing and everything at the same time. Whether this is the result of his experience is difficult to ascertain. Is his story true? Is there a CQWW star chamber working behind the scenes to keep the contest clean? We can't say for sure. Perhaps the mere possibility is enough to give those who would push the limits a little too far pause. But come this fall when the DX begins to fly through the air, at least one operator is sure to be keeping his nose clean, very clean.

Xtreme Contester in Training

Investigative journalists for the Fi-Ni Report (stop laughing!) have obtained video of Xtreme contester Macho Cuesew in his secret lair training for the CQWW contests. It is rumored that Macho's lair may be near the North Korean border, thus this video was obtained at great risk. Bill Clinton was standing by, just in case. Informants tell the Fi-Ni Report that Macho spends hours a day working out as shown in the video, getting in tip-top shape for the upcoming contesting season. These secret training techniques used by Big Guns all over have never been captured on video before.