Category Archives: Activities

Nashua Area Radio Society activities. Included is Field Day, our Annual Picnic, Tech Nights, On The Air Activations and much more.

Activities, Education and Training, Featured, General, Newsletter, On The Air

2016 ARRL Rookie Roundup SSB – N1FD Muti-op Entry

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A team of newly licensed club members came together to enter the 2016 ARRL Rookie Round SSB Contest. We held a training session at our QTH the weekend before the contest to allow our operators to learn about contesting and to become familiar with our station. We put together a training package to introduce the operator team to contesting in general and to the ARRL Rookie Roundup. You can view the training package here.

Station setup for the Rookie Roundup SSB
Station setup for the Contest

We entered the ARRL Rookie Roundup in the Multi-Op, Single Transmitter category using the club’s N1FD call sign. This gave everyone a chance to operate in the contest and to contribute to the team’s final score. Fred, AB1OC spent some time setting up and checking out our station ahead of time. Our operators used the N1MM+ logger and operated using 100w of power on the 20m and 40m bands.

Abby and Her Dad Jamey Operating in the Contest – Abby has a Bright Future as a Contest Operator!

We had a total of 13 Nashua Area Radio Club members who attended the preparation session and/or operated in the contest. Folks worked as teams during the contest with one person operating while another person logged. Our operators had nice pile-ups to work for a good portion of the contest. All of our Operators did really well. As you can see and hear from the above video, we definitely have some future contest stars in our club!

QSOsPointsMultipliers
Rookie QSOs66132
Non-Rookie QSOs214214
States40
Canadian Provinces4
DX (1 allowed)1
Total Multipliers45
Final Score15,570

The table above shows the results of our operations during the 6 hour contest period. Our team did really well! Of particular note is that they were able to work 45 of the 70 available multipliers. It will take some time for the ARRL to put together the results for everyone in the contest but we believe that our team did very well.

We are planning to host recently licensed club members again for the ARRL Rookie Roundup RTTY and the ARRL Rookie Roundup CW contests later this year. We hope to see many of our operators back again for these contests.

Anita (AB1QB)

Activities, Featured, General, Newsletter, On The Air

New England QSO Party

New England QSO Party
New England QSO Party

For a number of years, Tom, K1KI has been managing the New England QSO Party (NEQP) that takes place the first weekend of May, usually right after NEARfest. This year’s event will be held May 7 & 8. The NEQP has become very popular among county hunters since many of the Yankee Clipper Contest Club members get on the air from New England with several of them going mobile. The small size of the NE states and counties make it ideal to spend a few hours in the car running pile-ups from county lines.

If you’re new to the hobby, this is an excellent time to experience the thrill of being a sought-after station. Stateside QSO parties are a great stepping stone to larger operating events like Field Day. Whether you go mobile or not, there are plenty of stations looking to work NE.

2015 New England QSO Party Certificate
2015 NEQP Certificate

Lest you think you need to slog it out for hours to get anywhere, I won the NH Hillsborough Low Power category, using N1FD, for 2015 with only 162 QSOs. Tom spreads the wealth to maximize enjoyment.

If you’re interested in giving it a try, check out NEQP.ORG for details. In past events, NARC has used an interactive spreadsheet for those who would like to operate with the N1FD callsign so that folks can select a time and frequency for operating.

Finally, as a warm-up, look for me from Marion county, FL the weekend of April 30 – May 1.

73 de K2TE

Activities, Education and Training, Featured, General, Newsletter, On The Air

Join us for the ARRL Rookie Roundup SSB on April 17!!

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Are you a new Ham who has received your first license in the past 3 years? Are you interested in finding out what contesting is all about?   The ARRL has a contest just for you! The ARRL Rookie Roundup SSB is coming up on Sunday, April 17 from 18:00 UTC until 23:59 UTC (2 pm – 8 pm) and it is just for “Rookies”. We will be fielding a Multi-Op entry from the AB1OC/AB1QB QTH using our club callsign, N1FD.

Non-rookies can help by getting on the air and working rookies in the contest! See the ARRL Rookie Roundup Site for the rules and exchange.

AB1OC Antenna Tower
AB1OC Antenna Tower

We will hold elmering sessions for the contest to help you learn how to operate our station and use a contest logger the weekend of April 9th and 10th.  Join us at one of three sessions :

  • Saturday, April 9 at 10:00 am
  • Saturday, April 9th at 2:00 pm
  • Sunday, April 10th at 1:00 pm

The rules for the Rookie Roundup are on the ARRL website at http://www.arrl.org/rookie-roundup. If you are a rookie and you are interested in operating in the contest, or just visiting our station and watching the operation, contact Anita, AB1QB at [email protected].

AB1OC/AB1QB Shack
AB1OC/AB1QB Shack

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