Well, I thought I'd write about this before. But searching for it in my archives I couldn't find anything about it so I guess I was just having an idea and never made a post yet. The TBDXC in the title is a abbriviation for True Blue DXers Club. You probabely heard about this club before and think they are digimode haters. Or may be you think that they are a club of old man that don't want have anything to do with modern HAMradio. They only want chatting in SSB and CW...well you might be right.....or not... I like their initiave to populate the CW/SSB part on the bands again. They announce a HF Ultra Marathon in either CW or SSB. This marathon is starting 1st of Januari 2021 and ending at 31st of December 2021. More info can be found on their website:
https://www.tbdxc.net/marathon
To participate you don't have to be a member of the TBDXC!
My thoughts about this marathon so far. Reading the rules and watching videos I think the organiser doesn't do much contesting. And of course this marathon isn't really a contest although you can win a certificate and there might be prizes in the end. First of all I regret you have to choose CW or SSB and no mixed mode. Their explanation: "the many software packages that can be used to make participation, scoring and results submission a lot easier are contest programs and do not support mixed mode". Why not? N1MM is one of the software packages they recommend. N1MM is capable of mixed mode....as a matter of fact I just finished the ARRL 10m contest in mixed mode this month. Another video on the marathon site does recommend the use of 2 logging programs...really! Why? If you log in your contest program you can do a ADIF export at the end of the day and import it in your main logger. No need to log in your main logbook first and then log in your contestlogger. If both software packages do support UDP you can even forward QSOs made in N1MM to any other main logger like HRD, Log4OM, Logger 32 or whatever...Anyway, I don't want to judge too much about this all. The idea is great and I think I will participate. I have pre-registered and just got the message that official registration will be on new years eve. It will be a relief to have another goal next year that doesn't involve digimodes but the good old talking and listening...
Very good! perhaps the underlying message is that there is a growing movement of operators who want something more meaningful than rapid-exchange didigmodes. They have their place, of course, but even something like JT65 or JT9 is nicer, giving one time to check QRZ.com details of the other side, or just have time to make some toast in between 'overs'!
ReplyDeleteAs the solar conditions improve, we may well see a stronger return to SSB, for example.
Good luck!
I've never done any contesting but this seems like it might be of interest (I'm not keen on 59-59-73 contests). I might register.
ReplyDelete73, Tom, M7MCQ