A fantastic effort in a contest deserves some extra recognition — and some attractive wall art!

We are planning a record number of plaques for both modes of the WPX Contest in 2009.  You can see a full list of plaques at http://www.cqwpx.com/plaques.htm.  Special thanks to everyone who stepped forward to sponsor a plaque.

There are still a number of plaques that need sponsors.  These include:

SSB

• Single Operator All Band - ZONE 3
• Single Operator All Band - EUROPE Low Power
• Single Operator All Band - EUROPE QRP/p
• Single Operator All Band - ASIA
• Single Operator All Band - CANADA High Power
• Single Operator Single Band - WORLD 28 MHz
• Single Operator Single Band - WORLD 21 MHz
• Single Operator Single Band - WORLD 3.7 MHz
• Single Operator Single Band - WORLD 1.8MHz
• Single Operator Single Band - USA 28 MHz
• Single Operator Single Band - USA 21 MHz
• Single Operator Single Band - USA 14 MHz
• Single Operator Single Band - USA 7 MHz
• Single Operator Single Band - USA 3.7 MHz
• Single Operator Single Band - USA 1.8MHz
• Single Operator Assisted - USA
• Tribander/Single Wire - EUROPE
• Multi-Single - WORLD

CW

• Single Operator All Band - EUROPE Low Power
• Single Operator All Band - EUROPE QRP/p
• Single Operator Single Band - USA 28 MHz
• Single Operator Single Band - USA 1.8 MHz
• Single Operator Assisted - WORLD

The cost to sponsor a plaque is $50 USD and can be paid by Check, Credit Card, or Paypal (preferred).  Contact award manager, Doug Grant, K1DG, (k1dg@cqwpx.com) to reserve your plaque and make arrangements for payment.

Thanks again to everyone for their support of the WPX Contest.  Looking forward to another record year of log submissions and fun.

All certificates for the WPX SSB Contest 2008 are now in the mail.  Thanks to Barry, W5GN, and his helpers for making this happen.  Doug, K1DG, reports the plaque order is at the engraver so those should be going out soon.

The March issue of CQ Magazine containing the CW results is out.  Look for that in your mailbox over the coming week.  The writeup and scores take up 15 pages of the magazine!

One of my goals as director of the WPX contest is to make the results reporting as accurate as possible (i.e., perfection). When dealing with over 3400 logs and 25 categories per country/call area there are a lot of opportunities for errors to sneak in.  Maybe I will achieve the goal next year. 

I have to recognize and congratulate the sportsmanship displayed by Mike, K9NW. He noticed an error in how his single band 160 meter score was calculated and brought it to my attention.  Turns out there were errors in calculating the final scores of some single band logs.  The QSOs and points were calculated correctly, but they received multiplier credit for QSOs made on other bands.  The result of the corrections is that Mike is no longer the winner of single band 160 meters for the USA.  That honor now goes to W2MF.

In another example of sportsmanship, I received an email from Koji, NH0DX.  Koji had misunderstood the rules for the Rookie category and realized that he was not eligible for the category.  His US license was for less than 3 years, but he had been licensed in Japan as JL3RDC for 23 years. As part of the log checking process I had researched the calls of the Rookie category winners, but had missed that Koji had been licensed in Japan.  This makes Patrick, OT2A, the World high score for the Rookie category.

I have to blame the software for something although it is an error I should have caught.  The results for Italy and Sicily (IT9) were combined into one country.  The corrections page lists the new results for Sicily.  We apologize for the error.

When I was compiling the results for the magazine, I missed marking in bold some of the certificate winners in the Rookie category.  Also, F4FLQ and EA3ATM had correctly entered the Rookie category in their log, but they were not listed as such in the results.  Both are country winners for their category.

A list of all corrections to the magazine results can be found at http://www.cqwpx.com/results_2008_ssb_corrections.htm.  These corrections have already been applied to the on-line score database.

W5GN will be printing and mailing all certificates for the WPX SSB contest this month.  Our plan is to have them in your hands prior to the WPX SSB contest at the end of March.  All corrections will be reflected in the certificates.  K1DG has the order for the plaques off to the engraver and those will also be in the mail prior to the contest.  Say thanks to both of these guys for the work that they do.