SRCC LEAGUE TABLE – October 2022
The number of entries received for this month’s League Table was eight (the same as in September), including one null entry. The monthly results are shown below. Relative positions have changed little since September – and what change there was occurred among the “top end crew”: Ian M0CGF moves up two places to first, displacing Ray G4FFY and Peter G3ZPB by one place each to second and third respectively. The combined October scores for the three leaders were 49% up on those in September, suggesting that the alternative attractions of the summer were now past history. Interestingly a similar upturn between September and October was noticeable last year. What is less clear is why the three leaders’ combined October league scores this year were around 5% down on the equivalent last year, at a time when the solar flux index has risen from around 85 to around 135, which might be expected to result in considerably improved conditions on the HF bands…. Hum ho, I guess that’s one of the things that makes the hobby interesting!
| ENTRANT | WORKED DXCC / SQUARE | WORKED SRCC MEMBER | WORKED IN CONTEST | POINTS THIS MONTH |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| M0CGF | 85 | 0 | 67 | 237 |
| G4FFY | 74 | 3 | 32 | 186 |
| G3ZPB | 63 | 0 | 29 | 155 |
| G4FYF | 29 | 1 | 0 | 60 |
| M0LEP | 14 | 4 | 0 | 36 |
| G3WRR | 10 | 0 | 10 | 30 |
| G3EUE | 6 | 0 | 0 | 12 |
| G4LZE | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
The great majority of Ian’s scoring contacts were made on the HF bands, with a further handful of Europeans on 6m. The largest number (26%) were on 20m, followed by 40m & 10m (16% each), 15m (12%), 80m (9%), 12m (7%), 17m (6%) and 6m (5%). The majority (86%) were made using SSB with 12% on FT8 – and 2% (two contacts) on CW! I believe this is the first time Ian has made scoring league table contacts on CW… It is worth noting that one of the latter was with ZP (Paraguay) – certainly far from common – and the other with D6 (Comoros Islands) – seriously rare. This demonstrates one of the benefits of using CW…but I would say that wouldn’t I? A potentially interesting aside is that the Comoros is where the majority of surviving coelacanths (a very rare type of fish that was believed to have been extinct for millions of years until 1938 when they were rediscovered) are resident. However, there is no suggestion that the DX end operator was a coelacanth, as it is understood that they find using morse keys quite tricky. All continents except Antarctica were worked, with Europe predictably dominant at 45%. Apart from the Comoros, other interesting countries included were CE9 (Easter Island), D4 (Cape Verde Islands), FG (Guadeloupe) and PZ (Suriname).
85% of Ray’s scoring contacts were on the HF bands, and the remaining 15% on VHF. He lost a certain amount of October operating time due to his trip to the USA, but nevertheless took advantage of good HF conditions to pick up four new DXCCs – TY (Benin), D4 (Cape Verde Islands), S3 (Bangladesh) and V2 (Antigua and Barbuda) on 10m during the CQ WW SSB contest, which is always a good source of interesting and often rare countries. He managed scoring contacts from all continents except Antarctica. Europe was dominant at 54%, followed by Asia and Africa (14% each), North America (10%), South America (6%) and Oceania (2%). 42% were on 20m followed by 10m (36%), 60m (11%), 80m (6%), 40m & 12m (3% each). All of his VHF contacts were made on 2m using FT8 in the RSGB FT8 contest with the exception of one on SSB and were from four Western European DXCCs.
Peter’s score this month was nearly 50% up on that of September which itself had been a substantial increase on those in the period between March and August. He describes it as an “all-digital month”. He made just under half of his scoring contacts on 40m & 20m in the RSGB FT4 contest and also took advantage of the improved 10m conditions to go DX chasing. He worked all continents except Antarctica, including a wide range of interesting destinations including VK (Australia), ZL (New Zealand), BY (China), EP (Iran), TY (Benin), FK8 (New Caledonia) as well as a number of the Central Asian Republics such as Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. He also had scoring contacts with 13 big squares in the RSGB 70cm FT8 contest. Peter notes that he now has an improved 80m antenna: using this in forthcoming FT4 contests should allow him to make contacts with some of the nearer European countries that are less easy to work on 40m & 20m due to the skip distance.
Steve spent most of his time on 10m, where he made scoring contacts with CT3 (Madeira), CX (Uruguay), HZ (Saudi Arabia), LU (Argentina), PJ2 (Curacao), PY (Brazil),W (USA) and ZF (Cayman Islands). He describes the band as lively, and goes on to say “Reminds me of good old days when not many watts and a minimal antenna would get you across several thousands of miles. Good sport!”
Rick’s European DXCCs were all SOTA summits, and the North American ones were a mix of Summits and Parks. The latter is a USA initiative which appears similar to SOTA but based on parks rather than peaks. The scheme’s URL is https://parksontheair.com and is well worth a look. He also had a good crop of SRCC members via the Monday 80 metre nets.
All Quin’s scoring contacts (ten big squares) were made on 6m in the RSGB 6m AFS and UKAC contests: all were on SSB with the exception of one on CW.
There is little detail available on Ted’s scoring contracts, but we can be confident that they were all made on the HF bands using CW!
Time did not permit Colin to get on the air and make an entry this month, and h submitted a null entry.
The cumulative annual table is shown below, with relative positions remaining the same as for September.
The 2022 cumulative table is shown below:
| ENTRANT | JAN | FEB | MAR | APR | MAY | JUN | JUL | AUG | SEP | OCT | NOV | DEC | TOT |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| G4FFY | 166 | 153 | 207 | 164 | 252 | 536 | 205 | 166 | 194 | 144 | 2297 | ||
| M0CGF | 102 | 87 | 108 | 86 | 194 | 424 | 0 | 82 | 84 | 237 | 1402 | ||
| G3ZPB | 90 | 123 | 0 | 31 | 54 | 46 | 32 | 0 | 111 | 155 | 642 |
Several entrants commented on the improved conditions on 10m – always a sensitive indicator of the state of the sunspot cycle but affecting 15m as well – and took advantage of this to contribute to their entries. This is a virtuous circle in which signals on the band encourage other stations to come on which results in signals on the bands which encourages etc etc… It is also noticeable that there are often FT8 signals on the higher bands – particularly 10m – when other modes are absent.
Readers interested in what the HF bands are up to may not be aware of the IARU International Beacon Project. In this scheme, a worldwide chain of eighteen beacons take turns to transmit in a regular three minute time sequence on specified frequencies in the 20, 17, 15, 12 & 10m bands. Listening on these is an extremely useful indicator of what bands are open when and to where. Details are available at https://www.ncdxf.org/beacon/intro.html . There is also a Remote Beacon Network – but more of that another time!
The end of the year approaches and the Committee will be reviewing the rules that will apply to the League Table in 2023. Suggestions for changes from participants and or other club members are welcome. One such has already been received and the more the merrier – so please let me have your views / ideas….
73, Quin G3WRR
SRCC Leaguemeister