Worked All WRTC Stations for World Radio Team Championship

The World Radiosport Team Championship taking place over the weekend of 14-15th July 2018 in parallel to the IARU HF Championship, has announced a new award available to the 63 completing teams from identical sites south of Berlin.

The Worked All WRTC Stations (WAWRTC) award honours QSOs with all 63 stations. In order to apply for the award, one QSO with each station, regardless of band and mode, is needed.

For Europeans, 80 and 40 will likely be the best bands (+20m depending on propagation conditions). For DX operators from outside Europe 40 and 20m are probably the best bet. 

More Information - http://www.wrtc2018.de/

2x1 Contest Amateur Radio Callsigns for Norway

Following a longtime request from the Norwegian contest community, the Norwegian Communication Authority (NCA) recently permitted the use of 2x1 contest call signs for individual radio amateurs.

“We are very pleased that the 2x1 call signs finally materialized, and hope this will inspire the Norwegian contesters to increased activity and recruit more contesters”

— LB1GB Bjorn, leader of LA Contest Club

With few exceptions Norwegian 2x1 call signs have been reserved for club stations, which have also been permitted to use the LN prefix in contests. The new call signs will use the LC prefix and one letter suffixes. The 2x1 call signs are available for all radio amateurs with a Norwegian call sign.

They are issued for contest use only and must be renewed every five years.

The first issuance from the new call sign series took place on 15 April during Norsk Hammeting 2018, the biggest ham radio event in Norway.

All applicants had to list five call signs in order of priority. Some call signs were applied for by several contesters, and those were allocated by random drawing among the applicants. All applicants received one of their listed call signs. 27 call signs were issued in the first issuance. The remaining call signs will be issued on a first come, first served basis.

Norsk Radio Relae Liga (NRRL), the national ham radio organization of Norway, has been given the responsibility to administer the contest call sign scheme on behalf of NCA. NRRL charges an administrative fee of 1 000 NOK (approx. 125 USD, 103 EUR) on issuance and renewal, while NCA charges the same fee on issuance only.

“We hope the shorter call signs will improve the QSO rates and the call sign readability and reduce the error rates for our contacts. With five and six characters call signs, Norwegian contesters may we have felt a little disadvantaged, but now we can be on equal terms with many contesters in other countries. Our only remaining issue now is our location way into the aurora belt, but that is a challenge we probably will have to live with”

— Rag, LB3RE - Leader of the NRRL Contest Committee

2018 IARU HF World Championship Contest

The 2018 IARU HF World Championship Contest takes place the second full weekend of July, beginning 1200 UTC Saturday and ending 1200 UTC Sunday (14-15 July 2018).

Both Single and Multi-operator stations may operate the entire 24-hour period. All licensed amateurs worldwide are eligible to participate in this contest.

The objective of this contest is to contact as many other amateurs as possible, especially IARU member society HQ stations, around the world using the 160, 80, 40, 20, 15 and 10 meter bands.

Multipliers are the total number of ITU zones plus IARU member society HQ stations worked on each band (not mode). Thus, your Society's HQ stations participation is very important for the multipliers.

Last year, 11 societies participated in the contest from Region 3, and I hope to hear/work more HQ stations from our region this year.

IARU officials represent a maximum of four multipliers per band (AC, R1, R2 and R3). Our two regional AC members have the option of using "AC" or our regional designator "R3". Regional EC members who are not AC members must use our designator "R3".

Competition Rules - http://www.arrl.org/iaru-hf-championship