2013 Thirteen Colonies Top Operator Award

I believe that operating awards serve several important purposes within the Amateur Radio community. First, they encourage operators to get on the air and operate. Each award is different in this respect – some encourage DX’ing (ex. ARRL DXCC awards) while others encourage specific types of contacts (ex. the RSGB IOTA awards) and others are designed to encourage operators to provide the best possible experience in on the air events. At a personal level, operating awards several two important functions – they give us a means to test the performance of our stations and our skills as operators and they provide us with motivation and encouragement to improve both. Occasionally, an operating award comes along that really means a lot and I am happy and proud to say that I’ve recently achieved one of these. I’ve been active in the Thirteen Colonies Special Event for three years now and I’ve been working to improve our station and my skills as a pileup operator throughout this period. The 2011 event was my first experience operating a special event station (K2K New Hampshire) and I made several hundred digital contacts that year. In 2012, we used the Thirteen Colonies Special Event to prove in our new shack and made over 1,000 contacts using a mix of digital modes and SSB phone. This year, I set out to achieve the Top Operator Award in the high-power, single op category using our recently completed station including our tower-based antenna system and high-power setup. As you can see from the photo above, this effort was successful and provided an award that I will always be very proud to display in our shack.

2013 Thirteen Colonies Top Operator Certificate

I was able to make 5,812 contacts over the 6 1/2 days of the 2013 Thirteen Colonies Special Event. These contacts were made across all of the non-WARC bands from 160m – 2m. You can see more of the details of the contacts that Anita (AB1QB) and I made this year here. I’d like to thank Ken Villone (KU2US) who runs the Thirteen Colonies Special Event and Richie Feola (W1STT) who is the New Hampshire coordinator for the event for providing us with the opportunity to be part of something very special.

New K2K New Hampshire QSL Card

Richie (W1STT), Anita (AB1QB) and I have been working on a new QSL card for the Thirteen Colonies K2K New Hampshire station. I think it has turned out quite nicely. The new cards are in the process of being printed and we’ll be sending out the new cards to those who have QSL’ed contacts with K2K this year as soon as we receive them.

Thanks so much to everyone who participated in the 2013 Thirteen Colonies Special Event. I hope that we created some good memories for everyone. This is certainly the case for me.

– Fred (AB1OC)