What is ADXO?

In its broadest sense, Announced DX Operations (ADXO) is a collection of tables containing information about special Amateur Radio DX and contest operations. In ADXO you'll find details of future and current DX operations, previous operations for the current year, past operations covering earlier years beginning with 1996, as well as operations conducted as part of major contests (CQ Worldwide, ARRL DX, CQ WPX, and IOTA) starting with 1996's CQ Worldwide DX.

OK, so where do I find what?

Future and currently active DX operations are found in the main ADXO table, which corresponds to the "Active {current year}" item (top, leftmost) in the ADXO menu (situated below the blue "About Announced DX Operations" banner near the top of this page). You'll find the same menu at the top of most ADXO tables. If the current date falls between an operation's start and end dates, that operation is highlighted by a contrasting background color.

DX operations which began during the current year, but have now ended, can be found in the current year archive, which corresponds to the "Expired {current year}" item in the ADXO menu above.

Earlier years' DX operations are found in separate tables corresponding to the year in which the operation started. To access the earlier years, simply click on "Previous Years" menu option and chose the year of interest. The earlier year table are ordered by first by DXCC entity and secondarily by date on which the operation started.

Alternative sort arrangements

The main ADXO table is sorted by "operation start date" (the first table column). If you like, you may see its data sorted by any of the following alternative sorts: End Date, DXCC Entity, Call. Doing this is easy. The ADXO table header looks like this:

First, notice that the "Start Date" column has a yellow background. This tells you that you're looking at a table sorted by "start date". Also note that the text in the column headers labelled: "End Date", "DXCC Entity", and "Call" are links. To see the a table sorted according DXCC entity, simply click on "DXCC Entity" link in the column header. Once you do so, you'll notice that the DXCC column header on the DXCC-sorted table is yellow, showing you that you're looking at data sorted by DXCC entity. "End Date" and "Call" work exactly the same way.

What about contest operations?

Separate tables are provided for each of the major annual DX contests. Normally, two or three months prior to a contest, a link to its operation table is embedded in the main ADXO table. Look for a line similar to this:

Just click on the contest name ("CQ World Wide DX, CW" in this case) and you'll retrieve a table of announced operations for the corresponding contest. The format of contest tables varies somewhat depending on the contest. Only the most significant contest-related operations are included in the main ADXO table, so be sure to check each contest table for items of interest too.

You can return to the main ADXO menu system from a contest subpage by clicking the "ADXO" link in the menu at the top of the contest operation page.

A month or so following the contest, the link is removed from the main ADXO table to prevent its becoming cluttered. But information about older contests can always be found using the "Expired Contest and Special Operations (1996+)" link on the ADXO menu at the top of this or most ADXO pages.

How frequently is AXDO updated?

New items are normally added quite promptly, as soon as information about an operation is received. Around the time of a major contest, new items can be added to a contest sublist several times a day. Even during slack periods, it's unusual to update ADXO fewer than two or three times a week.

The new icons () that appear in ADXO appear when an item is first added remain in place for seven days. Once an operation has been completed, its corresponding item is transferred to a table of archived operations. The "new icon", "archive", and "current operation highlighting" processing occurs automatically once a day, shortly after midnight, Eastern Local Time (4 or 5 AM Z). This processing also occurs whenever new items are added manually. So, the main ADXO table, the "alternate sort tables", and the current year archive table are each updated at least once a day.

Changes

On January 4-5, 2019, the format of ADXO was modified somewhat in that links to older years were moved to a separate file. This alleviated the cluttered look of the header and made system maintenance a good deal easier.

Questions or Suggestions?

Do you have a question or suggestion concerning ADXO? If so, send them to: Bill@ng3k.com and I'll make sure they're answered either directly by return email or on this page.

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