YL100x – Latvia’s 100th Birthday

On November 18, 2018 Latvia celebrated its 100th Birthday. For this reason Radio Amateurs in Latvia activated five special callsigns with the prefix YL100 – one from each of 4 Latvia’s historical regions and one from the capital city Riga – to commemorate this event between November 1st to 18th, 2018. Special awards for working YL100 stations on different bands and modes are issued. More informations are here.

144 MHz: International Space Station on SSTV

Amateur Radio On the International Space Station (ARISS) has organized another Slow Scan TV event scheduled to start October 27 about 10:00 UTC and end October 29 around 19:30 UTC with a series of 12 pictures.

The following images were decoded on October 29, 2018 with the MMSSTV software on 145.800 MHz, Mode PD120. More information about amateur radio on the ISS can be found on the ARISS website.

The ARISS team in Poland has made available a special reception certificate for radio enthusiasts that participant in this ARISS SSTV Event. Directions on how to receive the certificate can be found here.

ARRL DXCC Challenge Award arrived

After waiting for almost exactly 4 months, the postman has finally delivered the long-awaited parcel today: Mail from the ARRL Headquater in Newington, USA, my DXCC-Challenge-Plaque with Endorsement 2.000.

2018_Challenge2000As the name says, this is plaque is a real challenge and a hardcore Award for the dedicated HF-Radio Amateur. The DXCC Challenge Award is given for worked and confirmed at least 1,000 DXCC band-entities on any amateur bands, 160 through 6 meters (except 60 meters). It’s a massive wooden plate with a blue-gold-etched plate on top. The Endorsement 2,000 means  an average of 200 confirmed DXCC Entities on every of those 10 bands.

To reach all these band points countless hours in front of the station were required but it was no less tough to get the necessary confirmations. Thanks to the help of the Logbook Of The World, things have become a bit easier in recent years. It would be nice if all stations finally could use this opportunity.

Next stop wants to be 2,500 – that might take a while and it’s great to have a next step in DXing.

Football World Championship 2018 – Short Term Awards

I have never been a fan of football before, so I did not pay any attention to all the activities and special stations during the period of this year’s World Cup in Russia. After about 2 weeks I worked one of the special stations on 50 MHz and decided to deal with the topic more closely.

As during other events, the National Radio-Amateur Organization named SRR (Soyuz Radiolyubitelei Rossii) is organizing a radio marathon during the Games called “Football 2018 – Russia”. Dozens of different special stations RC18xxx and R18xxx from Russia were active. In addition, there were also special stations in member countries of FIFA. The exact Award conditions are here. As always, all Awards are free of charge and can be downloaded as a PDF file.

To make it short: I did not reach the highest Award class with 500 contacts, but over 260 QSO’s are in the log. All in all, the activity was a lot of fun and it was worthwhile to work out these beautifully designed Awards.

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50 Years Member of the DARC

As early as 1968 I joined the DARC (Deutscher Amateur Radio Club) as a young boy together with my father. For this 50-year membership 1968 – 2018 I received a Certificate and a Golden Needle from the Head of our local Radio Club Karl-Heinz (DH8WG, left on picture) during our last club meeting end of April 2018.

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Worked All Continents – WAC 144 MHz

Beeing active on 2 m since 1973 with an interruption of more than 25 years I finally completed the “144 MHz WAC – Worked All Continents” last December and received the Award today.
Many thanks to 3V8ONU (Africa, CW-Meteor Scatter 1979), K1WHS (North America,  CW-EME 1982), UG6AD (Asia, Sporadic E 1989), VK5APN (Oceania, JT65-EME 2017) and PY2GN (South America, JT65-EME 2017) for making this possible.

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Back in 1983, that means 35 years ago, I completed the 432 MHz WAC just with CW-contacts. Now the question is: Which band is next for WAC?

More FT8-Awards by FT8-DMC

Because the weather in the last months did not allow any work on the antennas outside, so some time was left for QSO’s on the shortwave bands. Especially in FT8 mode many interesting DX stations could be reached.

Almost every day, the FT8DMC-Club launches new colorful diplomas for contacts in the FT8 digital mode. The application is made simply via the “Ultimate AAC” software. Mostly, the certificate can be downloaded after a few hours in the download center of the EPC-MC.

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Nice Surprise: WW 160m DX Contest Results

Today I got the result of the 2017 “World Wide 160 Meter DX Contest CW” were I participated in the Low Power Category with just the K3 barefoot. Finally it ended up in 6th place in DL out of 84 participants and I am quite satisfied, because operation was just 50% of the total Contest time. The SSB-part endet up with ranking 19 out of 34, but that one was just for fun.

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FT8-Awards by FT8-DMC

Normally CW is my favourite mode, but but from time to time I use digital modes on Hf like PSK31/PSK63 for example to complete the white spots for my DXCC-Award. Talking about HF-bands I never saw any use of JT65-modes here because for me it is much too slow compared to a nice CW contact. With the availability of the new mode FT8 things changed. The software based on a FSK 8 tone code, an occupied bandwidth of 47 Hz and a 15 second tournaround! This increased the activity dramatically and even rare DX-stations appeared and uses FT8 mode.

These days Joe, OE4VIE, has initiated the FT8-DMC Club and offer some very nice and colourful, free of charge pdf-Awards. They pushed the activity right again, not to say there is a real FT8 hype now. The WAC Award (Worked all Continents) is not a challenge at all, because it could be worked within an hour by a well equipped station. The DXCC Award is even more difficult and issued for contacts with 100 DXCC entities, like the original by ARRL.

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