Wednesday, August 16, 2006

DXCC Announces Accreditation Criteria Rule Change

From: ARRL

DXCC Announces Accreditation Criteria Rule Change
NEWINGTON, CT, Aug 14, 2006 -- ARRL's DXCC program has added language to its Accreditation Criteria to minimize difficulties stemming from online DXpedition logs. The change, recently approved by the ARRL Board of Directors Programs and Services Committee, limits the level of QSO detail that DXpeditions may provide on Web-based log sites, search engines or other public forums and still qualify for DXCC accreditation. ARRL Membership Services Manager Wayne Mills, N7NG, notes that it's become accepted practice for DXpeditions to post QSO information on the Web.
"Although this information is generally limited to call sign, band and mode, it has been useful in reducing the number of duplicate contacts in the DXpedition log," Mills points out. "Publishing complete QSO information or information from which full QSO information can be derived, on the other hand, threatens the integrity of the QSLing process, and is unacceptable."
Mills says at least some key information a station provides when submitting a DXpedition contact for DXCC credit must be obtained solely by actually making the QSO. "If complete contact information can be derived from information based on the DXpedition log, the QSL manager's job can be much more difficult if busted calls are involved," he says.
Section III, Accreditation Criteria, Rule 5, of the DXCC rules states:
"The presentation in any public forum of logs or other representations of station operation showing details of station activity or other information from which all essential QSO elements (time, date, band, mode and call sign) for individual contacts can be derived creates a question as to the integrity of the claimed QSOs with that station during the period encompassed by the log. Presentation of such information in any public forum by the station operator, operators or associated parties is not allowed and may be considered sufficient reason to deny ARRL award credit for contacts with any station for which such presentations have been made. Persistent violation of this provision may result in disqualification from the DXCC program."
"In almost every case, the new accreditation rule will change nothing," said Mills, calling the new rule a "reasonable compromise" in terms of its impact on the program's integrity. "Publishing band and mode information for each call sign -- as is now done -- is perfectly acceptable. It is only the rare case where complete QSO information is published or can be derived from published data that we are concerned about."

Saturday, August 05, 2006

KH8SI recap

Well the KH8SI dx-pedition is over. There has been much wailing and gnashing
of the teeth, especially in the US over the inability to work the station and the low signal strength.

Taken from http://www.jdxn.net/dx/060804-p2-kh8.htm
are the following stats:

KH8SI spent time on various bands and modes:
160 m CW 4h 03 min
80 m SSB 4h 04 min
40 m CW 1h 02 min
40 m SSB 21h 12 min
30 m CW 26h 38 min
20 m CW 21h 30 min
20 m SSB 56h 34 min
20 m RTTY 1h 20 min
17 m SSB 31h 54 min
15 m SSB 4h 48 min
12 m SSB 2h 57 min

Total time on SSB: 121 h 29 min 69 %
Total time on CW: 53 h 13 min 30 %
Total time on RTTY: 1 h 20 min 1 %
Total operating time: 176 h 02 min 100 %
QSO total? My rough estimate: 14.500


For the lack of time and planning due to the short notice, even though
I did not work them, I think they did a good job under the circumstances.
I wish they had worked CW more...but meh can't have it all

Hopefully someone will be headed back to activate Swain Island shortly!

73 Jack

Geomagnetic Disturbance

Friday July 28th, a high speed solar wind stream made it's way to hit Earth
and caused a major geomagnetic disturbance that caused the planetary
and mid-latitude A index to soar to 29 and 26. The K index soared to 6.
This caused periods of high absortion and propagation to seemingly
go only north to south.

Sunspot numbers still are still above the numbers recorded at the previous
minimum in 1996. The current minimum is expected to occur in Jan 2007 with a sunspot number of 5.


The average daily sunspot numbers for the months July 2005 through July
2006 were 68.7, 65.6, 39.2, 13, 32.2, 62.6, 26.7, 5.3, 21.3, 55.2, 39.6,
24.4 and 22.6. Average daily solar flux for the same months was 96.5, 92.4 ,
91.9, 76.6, 86.3, 90.8, 83.4, 76.5, 75.5, 88.9, 80.9, 76.5 and 75.8.

Sunspot numbers for July 27 through August 2 were 23, 17, 19, 23, 25,
11 and 22 with a mean of 20. 10.7 cm flux was 74.4, 72.6, 73, 73.9, 72.4,
72.8, and 72.1, with a mean of 73. Estimated planetary A indices were 9, 29,
5, 5, 12, 12 and 10 with a mean of 11.7. Estimated mid-latitude A indices were
5, 26, 3, 3, 11, 9 and 7, with a mean of 9.1.

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