As well as a quick business meeting, the NORAC club meeting this month will feature a presentation on HAM Radio Contesting with Bud VA7ST and Doug VE7VZ presenting. This event should not be missed as the information given is also quite useful for regular operation as well.
Doug (VE7VZ) and Bud (VA7ST) are both members of the ORCA DX and Contest Club.
In addition, Bud is the Webmaster for the ORCADXCC website (https://orcadxcc.org/).
Both have active HF stations in the Okanagan operating on all HF bands and on 6m.
Doug has worked 319 of the 340 DXCC "countries" in the world, all 50 US states, 10 provinces and 3 territories, and 47 Japanese prefectures.
He has also been an instructor for Amateur Radio Basic Qualification classes in the Okanagan for the last 25 years, with a focus on Propagation and Antennas.
Bud is a very active contester, participating in many of the major HF contests throughout the year, and has placed highly in several contests.
He has experimented with a number of antenna designs to enhance his system, and maintains a webpage discussing his actitivies (https://va7st.ca/).
A few of the questions that might be answered in the course of the evening:
- What is the DXCC awards program, and how is a "DX country" defined?
- What other awards are there (WAS (worked all states), WAZ (worked all zones), WPX, etc)?
- What is contesting (or as the Europeans call it, Radiosport)?
- What different types of contests are there?
- How does contesting fit into the DXCC program?
- How is a score determined in a contest (countries, states, provinces, zones and contest multipliers)?
- What is a typical exchange of information in a contest, and how does it differ from one contest to the next?
- What computer programs are used by contesters to rapidly and accurately log contacts?