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Recently on Google Plus there was a discussion of what qualifies as a separate country in the amateur radio world. The confusion point was that Alaska was showing up in logging software as a “country”. It turns out is is both a country and a state.

The generally accepted countries list is established by the DXCC award. Actually, the correct term is entities, not countries, but in normal conversation people seem to use countries. DXCC stands for DX Century Club, with the minimum award being 100 (Century) countries.

Back to the issue of Alaska — it clearly is one of the 50 United States, so you’ll need to work it to achieve Worked All States (WAS). It is geographically separated from the lower 48 states, so it is also considered a separate country. The same is true for Hawaii — counts as a state and a country.

To find out what counts as a country, you need to study the DXCC Country List. A peek at this list reveals that these US possessions are all considered separate countries for DXCC purposes:

K,W,N, AA-AK#  United States of America
KG4# Guantanamo Bay
KH0# Mariana Is.
KH1# Baker & Howland Is.
KH2#* Guam
KH3#* Johnston I.
KH4# Midway I.
KH5# Palmyra & Jarvis Is.
KH5K# Kingman Reef
KH6,7#* Hawaii
KH7K# Kure I.
KH8#* American Samoa
KH8#* Swains I.
KH9# Wake I.
KL,AL,NL, WL#* Alaska
KP1# Navassa I.
KP2#* Virgin Is.
KP3,4#* Puerto Rico
KP5# Desecheo I.

So there are 19 countries, just inside US territory.

The DXCC Rules that define a country are complex, a mix of geographical and political considerations. I won’t even try to explain it here. Be aware that as the political boundaries change, countries can be added or deleted from the list.

73, Bob K0NR

There’s lots of information spewing forth from the interwebznet. Here are a few items of interest.

The amateur radio community is buzzing with excitement from the excellent propagation on the HF bands during the CQ Worldwide DX Contest last weekend. For example, see the radio-sport.net post or my post.

One of our local Boy Scouts passed his Technician exam on the Saturday before the contest, showed up in the FCC database on Friday and was working DX on 10 Meters on Saturday. He managed to snag some good ones, including Australia.

The ARRL is reporting that Logbook of the World is having trouble keeping up with the influx of radio logs. Although it would be nice if they could put a little more compute horsepower on the system, I think it is great that LoTW is seeing this kind of volume.

The Interstate Highway Rest Area Society is making a pitch to encourage hams to monitor 146.52 MHz when mobile.  I usually try to do this and every once in a while I will stumble onto a great QSO that way. This group is also promoting ham radio activation of highway rest areas. Yes, really, it is not a hoax.

73, Bob K0NR

I had previously admitted to being an HF slacker…that is, I only really enjoy the high frequency bands when the DX is loud and plentiful on 15 and 10 Meters. For almost a half decade, I’ve listened to the True HF Enthusiasts say things like “move to the lower bands when the solar activity is weak.” Fortunately, things are starting to change.

This weekend was the CQ Worldwide DX Contest (SSB) and the propagation was outstanding on the higher bands. I heard some people say that 10 Meters was never this good before but I suspect their memories may be faulty. But make no mistake, conditions were really awesome. Here’s a report from radio-sport.net.

I was up at our cabin in the mountains, running the FT-950′s 100 watts into a trap dipole at about 30 feet. Clearly, this is not your Big Gun Station but I was able to make 177 contacts, operating most of Saturday and a few hours on Sunday. Mostly, I was just chasing DX and trying to pick up a few new countries. I have to admit that my memory had a little rust problem concerning international call sign prefixes (where is C5A anyway?) but the N1MM software helped me out.

In the end, I did contact a dozen or so new countries, ranging from Mongolia to Croatia. I sure hope these guys upload their logs to Logbook of the World. I really don’t want to be chasing down those QSL cards manually. As I said, I am an HF Slacker.

73, Bob K0NR

I have been hearing everyone rave about the improving conditions on the HF bands, especially some great propagation on 10 Meters. Then I came across this posting by G4VXE: The Return of 10M FM. Ah, yes, I do recall having a blast running FM on 29 MHz years ago!

This triggered the thought that the FT-8900 transceiver in my car has 10 Meters in it. Lately, I have been using this quad-band FM rig (10M, 6M, 2M & 70 cm) like a dualband 2M/70cm rig. I almost forgot that it had the other two bands. I plopped a 10 Meter Larsen antenna on the SUV roof and reconfigured the coaxial cables and diplexers to get the right RF to the antenna. Suddenly, I was back on 29.6 MHz FM calling CQ. K8LF (Jerome, mobile in Virginia) came back to my call and we had a nice little QSO.

10M FM is a little bit counter intuitive (some people would say “makes no friggin’ sense at all!”). Here we have a high frequency band which can introduce fading and phase distortion (that destroys FM signals) being combined with our most inefficient modulation format (FM). Why on earth would anyone mess around with this combination?

I think FM is fun on 10 Meters for the same reason it is fun on VHF and UHF. You can be tooling down the highway with no radio noise at all and if the band is open, a signal pops through the squelch. Forget all of the static and Donald Duckness of SSB communication. When the signal is strong, FM is loud and clear.

Its good to have 10 Meters back again!

73, Bob K0NR

The logs have been sent in, the scores tabulated and awards issued for the 2nd running of the Colorado FM Sprint. See my previous post, announcing the contest. The competition was tough significant weak not too bad rather slim and the following awards have been issued:

Come on out and play next year!

73, Bob K0NR

It is always important to follow proper radio protocol…