Hi All,

As we plunge back into the fall / winter contest season, I'd like to share a couple thoughts and reminders with you...

1. Please Participate - It's Fun and Rewarding!

There are tons of great reasons to participate in Amateur Radio contests! Radiosport offers a great opportunity to speedily connect with lots of fellow hams, enhance your operating skills, learn about propagation, demonstrate the ability of Amateur Radio, accumulate lots of DX entities in a hurry and discover the strengths and weaknesses of your station. Most of all, it's FUN!

This weekend's CQ WW SSB is an awesome contest! Stations all over the world work each other for multipliers and points. Multipliers include totals of both DX entities and CQ Zones on each band worked. It is a smorgasbord of DX and a fantastic opportunity to add DX entities on multiple bands to your log. You can literally work DXCC (100 unique DX entities) in one weekend (at cycle peak, I've done it here with wires and 100 watts). In fact, with reasonable conditions, a decent antenna system and a concerted effort, you can work DXCC, or come very close, on multiple bands in one weekend!

If you are a new contester, CQ WW SSB is about perfect to get your feet wet. The exchange is simple. Just send your Call, RST and CQ Zone.

To make it even easier, my software auto fills the zone, so you can either type the Call of the station you want to work or click on a DX Spot, and the rest auto fills. If you are clicking and pouncing, just click, send your exchange and press enter. Virtually no typing!

You will find my CQ WW Contest Software here!

2. Pre Contest Checklist

Even if you are an experienced contester, please take a quick moment now to review this Pre Contest Checklist. It will help you get the software ready for each contest and enjoy it to its fullest! Answers to the vast majority of the pre and post contest support questions I receive are concisely addressed in this link.

Please review the above link before every contest!

3. Click & Pounce Auto Advance

Enabling DX Spotting and the band map is great for even faster QSO rates and collecting more entities. The band map essentially becomes your "to do" list of stations to work. I've just added a new feature this year to optionally auto advance to the next DX spot, making the process even faster. Previously, after working the station, we would right click on the band map spot to clear it and then click on the next station. Now those couple seconds can be spent hearing and working the next station in the list!

Just press Ctrl + Shift + E to enable the feature. When you press enter to log a contact, your rig will instantly tune to the next station (with rig interface enabled). Complete details on using DX Spotting and the Band Map are here.

4. Web Contest Status Uploader

Even if it isn't something you are interested in for yourself, please click Settings > Web Upload Contest Status > Other Online Sites and enable them both. It is really fun to follow along in real time and gives others, including casual contesters, a sense of how they are doing!

5. Please Submit Your Log!

After the contest, even if you've just been casually operating with a handful of QSOs, please submit your log! It's the best way for the contest sponsors to quantify the popularity of a contest and the style of operating that participants enjoy. Click File > Write Cabrillo File, create the file and then just click on the link, right on the Cabrillo form, to take you to the submittal site.

Enjoy the contest!

And in response to the questions we always receive when we neglect to include the following in our e-mail announcements...

Package Upgrade Information...

If you have registered one or more individual programs and would like to upgrade to N3FJP's Software Package or N3FJP's Software Package and CD for full use of all our Amateur Radio software, we would be glad to apply the amount that you have registered so far as a credit towards that purchase. Please send us an e-mail directly and we'll let you know your balance.

N3FJP's Software Package includes more than one hundred programs for contesting, net management, general logging and other Amateur Radio related applications. In addition to full use of all these programs, registered package customers are also entitled to receive free passwords for any new software that is added to the package and free upgrades to existing programs. You'll find all the details on the Register Now page at www.n3fjp.com.

Donations are Gratefully Accepted!

And in response to the often asked question for which Kimberly and I are very grateful...

"I know your upgrades are free, but I also realize how much time and effort coding these enhancements and new programs take and that your pricing policy doesn't fully reflect that. Can I send you something to show my appreciation for your continued efforts?"

Yes, thanks so much, your continued support in any amount is very welcome and deeply appreciated! You can use this page:

http://www.n3fjp.com/donations.html

or send your contribution by mail, payable to Affirmatech Inc., to:

G. Scott Davis
118 Glenwood Road
Bel Air, MD 21014-5533

Thank you so much for your continued support!

Thanks!

As always, thanks for your kind words, support, linking to our web site and spreading the word about our software. Kimberly and I really appreciate it!

73, Scott
N3FJP
http://www.n3fjp.com

Serving the Amateur Radio community with contesting and general logging software since 1997.