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North American SSB Sprint 9/22/2018

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Dear Fellow Ham,

Just a quick note to let you know about a very fun, short (4 hour) contest happening this weekend. It is the North American SSB Sprint contest, which takes place this Saturday evening, September 22nd, 2018 (UTC: Sun Sept 23, 0000Z – 0359Z)

Door Prizes!
One unique feature of the NA SSB Sprint is the door prizes!  Anyone with a submitted score of 1,500 points or greater is put into a drawing for a number of door prizes that have been provided by sponsors of the event!  Making 50 contacts with 30 multipliers is all it would take to generate 1,500 points to qualify!
W.A.S. T-Shirt Award!
Also, there is an NA SSB Sprint Worked All States T-Shirt awarded to everyone who manages to work all 50 states during the event.  That feat has actually been accomplished by several operators in the past! Imagine WAS in just 4 hours!!
Certificates and Trophies!
There are certificates and trophies in ALL of the power classes for ALL of the states and provinces.  There is even a Team Competition with awards.  Persons can form, name and register a 2 to 5-person team, such that the final scores from each of the 5 team members are added to generate a “Team Score”. Team members can be located anywhere.  Register your team at https://ssbsprint.com/team-registration/

Unique QSY Rule:
This contest, as with other NA Sprints, has a unique QSY rule.  If you call CQ, and someone answers your CQ, after that QSO has completed the person that called you gets that frequency and will then work the next caller, who will then get the frequency following that QSO. This has a couple of nice outcomes.  If you want to call CQ, you can find a spot to do so because you don’t have the band full of stations just calling CQ, since frequencies get vacated.  Also, after you call someone who is already on a frequency, when you complete that QSO, YOU GET THE FREQUENCY!  Many times there will already be stations ready to work the next station, which in this case will be YOU!  So you make two QSOs on that frequency.

For more information regarding this event, go to https://www.ssbsprint.comWe hope that you will be able to participate in and enjoy the NA SSB Sprint this weekend.  Even part-time participation can put you in the running to receive a door prize and having your state on the air may just make it possible for someone to get WAS during the event.

73, Bob KW8N & NA SSB Sprint Contest Committee
https://www.ssbsprint.com

P.S.  If you get a chance, please enter your planned activity at https://ssbsprint.com/planned-activity/my-planned-activity/ so that we can be sure that all States and Provinces will be on the air.

Windows 10 steals your bandwidth to share Windows updates with others

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Several of you hams have mentioned to me that your are in the process of updating to Windows 10 on the computers they use for rig control. Here is another update on W10 from TJ.

My friend Tommy Jordon come up with another Windows 10 “feature”. It seems W10 can use your machine to send updates to others so it eases the load on Microsoft servers. It’s called P2P or torrent. Read how to turn it off here

 

http://fossbytes.com/windows-10-steals-your-internet-bandwidth-to-send-updates-to-others-disable-it-here/

 

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Windows 10 shares your wifi setting with all your contacts? Beware…

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My good friend Tommy Jordon an IT expert posted a note today on his FaceBook Page about a new “feature” in Windows 10 that will share your encrypted secure wifi data/passwords with all of your contact so that when they come to visit they will have access to your system.

Pretty kewl feature right?  NOT.  At least not for me.

Here he is an article that will give you the info to “opt out” of these and another google “feature”.

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https://krebsonsecurity.com/2015/07/windows-10-shares-your-wi-fi-with-contacts/