If you operated in the CQ World Wide DX Contest, SSB, this weekend, today is the deadline. The contest ended at 2359 UTC on Sunday, October 25, and under the new 48-hour rule for 2026 all SSB logs must be submitted no later than 2359 UTC tonight, Tuesday, October 27. Web upload is the method of submission, and a log resubmitted after the deadline counts as a late log. The same rule change also makes clear that a human operator must initiate every frequency change, call, and logged contact, and that autonomous or robot operation is prohibited.
Newer contesters get a timely assist tonight. The ARRL On the Air Live series presents Contesting for the Beginning Radio Amateur at 8 PM Eastern, 5 PM Pacific, with Wayne Greene, KB4DSF, ARRL Director of Education and Learning. The session introduces the fun and benefits of contesting with a special focus on newly licensed hams, and covers how contesting sharpens operating skills, confidence, and knowledge of propagation that carry over to DXing and emergency communications. The livestream airs on the ARRL Learning Center at learn.arrl.org, and preregistration is required through the Learning Center.
Two other items sit close behind. On Thursday, October 29, the FCC holds its October open meeting, with votes expected on advancing an auction of 25 megahertz of mid-band spectrum in the 1675-1695 and 2020-2025 MHz bands for terrestrial, direct-to-device, or hybrid use, on modernizing the supplemental coverage from space rules, and on final rules allowing drone operations in the 800 MHz cellular band. Separately, Friday, October 31 is the deadline for schools to apply for grants from the ARRL Education and Technology Program.
On the DX bands, several October operations are in their final days. S9R from Sao Tome runs through October 31 with three stations on 160 through 6 meters, 3B9/M0CFW from Rodrigues Island is on through October 28, and 5W0ZP from Samoa, operating QRP on 40 through 10 meters, wraps up October 29. The Dominica team signing J79 calls finishes today, October 27, while JD1BQP from Ogasawara continues through November 2. Next up, the nine-operator KH8A team is scheduled to open from American Samoa on October 29, with four stations planned on 160 through 6 meters in CW, SSB, FT8, and RTTY.
The weekend brings the Stone Mountain HamFest on Friday and Saturday, October 30 and 31, at the Gwinnett County Fairgrounds in Lawrenceville, Georgia, followed by a Halloween contest slate that includes the ARRL EME Contest and the North American SSB Sprint on Saturday night. Space weather should not get in the way. The NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center reported a 10-centimeter solar flux of 91 and a sunspot number of 25 for October 26, with the geomagnetic field quiet. Its October 27 forecast expects a greatest Kp of 2.33 through October 29, no G1 or greater storms, no radio blackouts observed in the past 24 hours, and only a 10 percent chance of an R1-R2 blackout today.