Collins Radio Special Event

/

Members of the various Rockwell Collins Amateur Radio Clubs in various locations will be active during the last two weekends of September (21-23 September and 28-30 September 2013), to celebrate the 80th year anniversary of the incorporation of Collins Radio.

Look for the following stations who will participate:

  • N0CXX Cedar Rapids, IA
  • W0CXX Cedar Rapids, IA
  • W5ROK Richardson, TX
  • W4CRC Melbourne, FL
  • W6CXX Tustin, CA

Operations will begin from 9:00 AM to Midnight "local time" for each station, based on operator availability.

A special QSL card for the event is available for all stations (same design). A certificate is available for those who working 3 or more club stations on any combination of band/mode.

All QSL and certificate requests for ALL stations will be handled through N3SL.

Operations will be on non-WARC bands only. On CW, listen for "CQ CR80". On SSB, listen for "CQ Collins Radio 80th Anniversary Special Event".

Details on the operation and QSL instructions - http://www.w0cxx.org

California QSO Party

/

2013 is the 47th running of the California QSO Party - 'CQP' - perhaps the largest US State QSO Party!

The objective of the CQP is to work as many stations in California as you can on both CW and Phone. Stations may be worked once per mode/band combination for points with California Counties (58 of them) as individual multipliers.

California stations get credit for working stations inside and outside of the state with US States and Canadian Provinces as their multipliers.

The contest runs from 1600Z 5th October 2013 to 2200Z on 6th October 2013.

An all-out effort is being made to beat the record by a wide margin in 2013 – there should be TONS of activity from California!

The Northern California Contest Club sponsors CQP and offers a variety of awards open to stations inside and outside of California. The awards include plaques for the top operators in the Youth (under 18) and YL categories. A list of the awards is included in the rules.

Full rules for the CQP - http://www.cqp.org/Rules.html

SOTA now active in VK2

/

Sunday 1st September 2013 10am local (UTC 00:00) saw the start of summits being activated in the Summits on the Air scheme in Australia's VK2 (New South Wales) area.

This start coincided with Fathers Day in Australia and so there were less activators and chasers present than may have been but there were still enough stations active for several hours of interesting communication.

The SOTA "activators" and "chasers" only got to know the previous week that VK2 may be accepted into the award scheme on September 1st. (having had its summits verified and accepted)and the final "green light" only came on Saturday evening at 23:30 local.

Despite this those who have been preparing for some time for this day managed to get passes from their families to be away for a few hours and were rewarded with a beautiful first day of spring for their efforts. Activators in VK3 (Victoria) and VK5 (South Australia) also came on air either on mountain tops or at least out portable to take part in the party as well. The third already authorised state (VK1 - Australian Capital Territory) was almost empty of SOTA operators as they took the short trip over the border into VK2 to activate some of the new summits.

The VK2 "association" adds 1100 new Summits to those available in this worldwide award scheme.

As well as VK2 (New South Wales, Australia), VK4 (Queensland, Australia), KH6 (Hawaii, USA), W5A (Alabama, USA) and K8O (Ohio, USA) also went "live" on September 1st. This could be the most new associations to join the scheme in one day, so far. Thanks to the UK based Management Team for making this happen so quickly. The data for New South Wales (VK2) association was only submitted two weeks previous.