Articles and other information related to On The Air Operations, Special Events, Activations, DXxpeditions, Portable and Mobile On The Air Activities, Nets, etc.
The 13 Colonies Special Event is coming soon. It is the largest on-air special event in the world and it will take place from July 1 (9 AM EST) to July 6th (Midnight EST). The idea of the event is to work each state which grew from the original 13 Colonies. If you work one or more of the 13, you will receive a certificate like the one above. There will also be two bonus stations WM3PEN at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, PA and GB13COL in the United Kingdom. If you work all 13 Colonies plus these, it will be noted on your certificate.
K2K New Hampshire QSL Card
Each Colony station has a K2x Special Event call and will provide a QSL card to confirm your contact. The Event logged over 126,000 contacts in 2015 with K2K New Hampshire contributing over 10,000 of these. You can see a recap of the 2015 K2K New Hampshire operation here.
13 Colonies Special Event 2016 – K2K NH Top Club
I am the Thirteen Colonies State Manager for New Hampshire and we have assembled a team of operators from our club to work the event. Fred, AB1OC and Anita, AB1QB will provide training for the New Hampshire operator team and will make their station available for use during the event.
We operated as N1FD/m (Mobile HF) in the New England QSO Party (NEQP) this past weekend. We began our operation on Saturday afternoon on the Massachusetts – New Hampshire State line where we activated two counties and two states.
N1FD/m NEQP Multi-Op Team
We entered the 2016 NEQP Contest in the High Power Multi-Op Mobile HF Category. We operated using SSB phone mode mostly on the 20m and 40m bands. Wayne AG1A, Jamey KC1ENX, and Fred AB1OC were the operators. We took turns operating, driving and navigating. We used Fred, AB1OC’s mobile HF station in his truck.
CQ NEQP from N1FD/m
We operated Saturday and Sunday for nearly the entire contest period. We spent most of our time calling CQ and we had several nice pile-ups to work.
Counties Activated by N1FD/m in the 2016 NEQP
The map above shows the counties in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont that we activated during the contest. Anita, AB1QB helped us to create a route of counties to activate which included some of the more rare counties in Vermont and New Hampshire.
Operating On a County Line in Vermont
We tried to focus on activations where we could be in two counties as once. These activations produced some nice pile-ups for us to work.
Operating On a County Line in NH
We parked on county lines with 2 wheels of N1FD/m in one county and 2 wheels in another. This gave us two QSO points (one for each county) for each contact that we made.
NPOTA Activation – Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller NHP in Vermont
We had a few challenges along the way. We had some antenna related problems with our Mobile HF setup to deal with. Fortunately, we had some spare parts with us and we adjusted our operating style to overcome them. We also had to operate through a major solar event on Sunday. This made contacts very difficult but we still logged over 235 QSOs that day in spite of the conditions.
Wayne, AG1A Operating in NEQP 2016
All in all, we had a great time in the contest. We logged a total of 631 QSOs and we worked 58 Multipliers. Our claimed score was 36,598 – not bad given that this was our first entry as a mobile and our first time in NEQP. We worked 43 of 50 states and we had quite a few stations from Canada and Europe call in to answer our CQs.
There was some discussion on the way home about the Maine and New Hampshire QSO parties which will be held later this year. We hope to be N1FD/m again in one or more of those as well.
The Nation Parks On The Air (NPOTA) program was created by the ARRL to commemorate the National Park Service Anniversary (100th). Aron W1AKI, Merle W1MSI and Fred AB1OC made a trip to Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site in NH this past week. Our goals were to seek permission for a Club National Parks On The Air (NPOTA) Activation at the park as well as to see the site and do a brief trial activation. I am happy to report that we achieved all of these goals and also activate the park using our Mobile HF station!
N1FD NPOTA Presentation (click on the picture to see our presentation)
Aron and Fred put together a presentation which we shared with the head ranger, Greg Schwarz at the park. Our goal was to create an understanding of who we were, why we want to Activate Saint-Gaudens NHS, what our activation would involve and how we would relate to the National Park Service Anniversary celebration this year. We had a very good meeting with Greg and we secured permission for multiple activations of the park over the summer months. We will share more about what we are planning to do and the dates for our activations at our next club meeting.
Aspet House, Built About 1817
The park grounds are very beautiful and will be absolutely stunning in the summer time!
Garden With Bronze Monument
Saint-Gaudens was one of America’s greatest sculptors and some of his works and their history are nicely set in the building and gardens which make up the park. There is plenty to see and do in the park.
Open Meadow In The Park
The park has a large, open meadow which is surrounded by trees. The meadow is partly used for overflow parking and should offer a good area for us to use a mobile station plus a portable station when our club activates the park. We will be allowed to use a small generator and put up a small screened shelter to protect us from sun or rain while we operate. We were also invited to set up a table to share information about our club and about Amateur Radio in the area of the park which is frequented by visitors. The park hosts open air concerts most Sundays during the summer months. Greg indicated that about 200-400 visitors attend the summer concerts. He felt that this would be a good time for us to activate the park as there would be many visitors in the park for these concerts.
N1FD On The Air In NS-60
Greg also allowed us to park in the meadow and activate the park as part of the National Park Service Anniversary celebration. Aron W1AKI, Merle W1MSI and Fred AB1OC did a brief trial activation to get an idea of what propagation would be like in the park. We used Fred’s Mobile HF Station for the activation and we operated as N1FD on the 20m and 40m bands for about 45 minutes. If the trial run is any indication, we are going to have a lot of fun when our club does the real activation in the summer. In 45 minutes of operating, we gave 80+ happy Amateurs NPOTA NS-60 on a combination of the 20m and 40m bands. We were easily able to work stations in all regions of the US and we put 29 states and 4 DXCC’s into the log during our brief activation. We had folks in Alaska, Portugal, Poland and Canada call in and we had a good pileup for the entire time that we operated. We were using a paper log for the trial run and we had a hard time writing fast enough to get the QSOs into the log!
We hope that you’ll join us for one of our Saint-Gaudens activations during the summer!
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