Foundations of Amateur Radio
How are contests scored?
The essential purpose of an amateur radio contest is to get on air and make noise. Each contest has a set of rules on how they intend to achieve this. An integral part of the rules is the idea that you establish a contact, a QSO, with another station and exchange some predefined information. Likely the callsign, a signal report and often something else, a serial number, the age of the operator, a maidenhead locator or the CQ or ITU zone. I’ll race past the discussion around sending 5 and 9 as a standard signal report and move right along

ARRL announces leadership changes in the Central Division
ARRL Central Division Director Kermit Carlson, W9XA, has stepped down as Central Division Director. Carlson made the announcement at the July 2021 Board of Directors meeting this past weekend

FCC signals FM CB will be permitted on 27 MHz
63 years after the introduction of Class D 27 MHz AM CB Radio the FCC has agreed to permit FM to be used

Alpha Capricornid meteor shower
If you see a slow fireball in the midnight sky next week, it’s probably an alpha Capricornid

ARRL Board of Directors creates Emergency Communications and Field Services Committee
At its just-concluded July 2021 meeting, the ARRL Board of Directors approved By-Law changes creating a third Standing Committee that joins the existing Administration and Finance Committee and Programs and Services Committee

DATV repeater, VK3RTV now on the air
WIA News report that Amateur Radio Victoria’s DATV Repeater, VK3RTV commenced high definition television transmissions on Thursday 15th July with a two channel multi-plexed downlink using the DVB-T2 protocol

DXCC Country/Entity Report
According to the Amateur Radio Cluster Network for the week of Saturday, 17th July, through Saturday, 24th July there were 201 countries active

IOTA News from OPDX
Weekly IOTA News – compiled by Tedd Mirgliotta, KB8NW

Propagation de K7RA
Average daily sunspot numbers more than doubled from 21.3 last week to 48.9 during this reporting week, July 15-21. Average daily solar flux jumped from 72.9 to 81.3