Tag Archives: 13 Colonies Special Event

Activities, Featured, General, Newsletter, On The Air

NARS Prepares for the Thirteen Colonies Special Event

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The Thirteen Colonies Special Event begin this Sunday, July 1 at 9 am EDT. The event runs for 6 days and is the largest Amateur Radio Special Event in the world. Each state that grew from one of the original Thirteen Colonies will be using a K2x call and will have a nice QSL card available for Hams who work them. There will also be a very nice certificate available for Hams who work one or more of the stations that are part of the event.

2018 Thirteen Colonies Certificate
2018 Thirteen Colonies Certificate

The event is celebrating its 10th year in 2018 and we have designed a new QSL card for K2K New Hampshire this year.

The New Hampshire State Navy during the American Revolutionary War consisted of a single ship commissioned by the state of New Hampshire in 1779. The Hampden, a privateer owned by John Langdon, was purchased and outfitted by the state in August 1779. Our card features the Hampden.

2018 K2K QSL Card
2018 K2K QSL Card

Nashua Area Radio Society operators will be operating all of the K2K New Hampshire stations this year. We will be defending our Top State and Top Club titles this year. The NARS team made 12,838 contacts during the 2017 event and we are looking forward to making lots of contacts again this year!

K2K New Hampshire will be QRV on all bands 160m – 6m except for 60m. We will be operating using SSB Phone, CW, and Digital modes. We will also have a QRP station operating as K2K/QRP and some mobile stations operating as K2K/M.

K2K New Hampshire, QRZ?

Fred, AB1OC

Activities, Featured, General, Newsletter, On The Air

Thirteen Colonies Special Event – We are Top Club and Top State!!

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Well, it’s finally official – our Club is again the Top Club for the Thirteen Colonies Special Event 2017! Thanks to all of the hard work by the operators from our club, we also made K2K New Hampshire the Top State in the 2017 event with a total of 12, 838 contacts. We edged out K2M Pennsylvania by just 5 contacts!

Thirteen Colonies Special Event – K2K New Hampshire QSL Card
Thirteen Colonies Special Event – K2K New Hampshire QSL Card

Congratulations to all of our 2017 operators for a tremendous job well done!

Our 2017 Operator Team

  • AB1BY – Abby, Nashua, NH
  • AB1OC – Fred, Hollis, NH
  • AB1QB – Anita, Hollis, NH
  • AB1ZO – Brian Operating from AB1OC, Hollis, NH
  • AE1N – Layne, Nashua, NH – CW Only
  • AG1A – Wayne and Family (Megan and Mikayla), Operating from AB1OC, Hollis, NH
  • K1DLM – Dave, Windham, NH
  • K1HMS – Hamilton, Amherst, NH
  • K1LGQ – Dennis, Brookline, NH – QRP
  • KC1EMJ – Ira, Nashua, NH
  • KC1ENX – Jamey, Nashua, NH
  • N1CMD – Curtis, Peterborough, NH – Digital
  • W3UA – Gene, Bedford, NH – CW Only
  • WK1V – Desmond, Merrimack, NH

Our operator team also set an all-time record total number of contacts for K2K New Hampshire and increased our score from last year by +3,119 contacts.

You can learn more about the special event here. Also, check out Layne’s Thirteen Colonies soapbox article.

Thanks to all of our ops!

Fred, AB1OC
Thirteen  Colonies Special Event, K2K New Hampshire State Manager

General, Newsletter, On The Air

The 241st Birthday of The Thirteen Colonies

Yesterday, July 5, I participated in my second HF contest. The first was the Rookie Roundup last year where I worked SSB on HF. This time, I participated in the 13 colonies special event, and damn I was looking forward to it.

Admittedly, part of the excitement originated from being able to operate at Fred (AB1OC) and Anita’s (AB1QB) QTH; I was sure to be heard and sure to make a ton of QSO’s — and perhaps even a pileup? For a fellow who hasn’t been on the air for a bit, it was good to flex my ham radio muscles again and dive in.

Fred guided me through learning how to use the station and offered to log for me. He claims that he cannot hear that well. I think this is a front. The dude was hearing signals whose SNR was at MOST -20 dB; it was supernatural. When I was straining to hear anything in the pileups, Fred easily picked out a few letters or a full call. Whatever the truth may be, it was helpful to have someone guide me.

I began on 40m and it was pretty dead (it was about 6pm EST), so we switched over to 80m, which was even more absent of life. Finally, Fred suggested we go to 20m and work some DX.

Oh man…explosion of QSO’s!

Lots of dudes (and dudettes) operating. Lots of European pileups — and I thought I had a hard time hearing the American pileups. The European ones were even more challenging. Again, Fred came to the rescue with his familiarity of a lot of those calls. Some of the notable ones were a guy who was operating mobile from Turkey, and I believe someone from Algeria. I was trying to run the pileup and starting blurring letters at some points during the exchanges. I began to develop a sense of how difficult it would be to operate for an entire weekend without making a mistake. I was beat after two hours and some folks can bang out 48 with no problem.

At the end of my time slot, I really did have a blast. It’s fun to immerse yourself (especially during the work-week) in something so fun and exciting. Having caught the contesting bug again, I’m going to have to supe up my own station to begin to be a little more competitive 😉

73,

Brian (AB1ZO)

Radio Amateurs Developing Skills Worldwide