2014 Thirteen Colonies Special Event Certificate

The Thirteen Colonies Special Event begins today! The event runs from July 1st through July 6th, 2014. Anita and I will again be operating as K2K, New Hampshire as part of the event. There will be thirteen stations on the air (K2A-K2M) plus two bonus stations during the event. Working one or more will earn you an attractive certificate. If you work all 13, your certificate will indicate this (an endorsement for the bonus stations is also available). Details on how to obtain a certificate may be found here.

We have been operating as part of the Thirteen Colonies Special Event for several years now and we always have a great time doing it! I was able to make over 5,800 contacts as part of the event last year.

The Original Thirteen Colonies

The idea of the event is to work one or more stations in each of the states that grew from the Original Thirteen Colonies. Each state has several stations on the air and we try to provide contacts in SSB Phone, CW and digital modes on the HF bands and via Satellites. We will be operating on all of the HF bands 160m-10m (except 60m) including the WARC bands this year. Some states will also have operations on 6m and above as well as providing contacts via HAM Sats. The Thirteen Colonies Special Event stations made over 80,000 QSOs last year and we are shooting to make even more this year.

Thirteen Colonies Special Event QSL Cards

In addition to the attractive event certificate, each state and the two bonus stations have attractive QSL cards available. A card can be obtained for working on of the Thirteen Colonies Special Event Stations via a direct QSL request (including SASE/postage for the return of a card). You can find more information on how to request our QSL cards here.

This event is a lot of fun and is open to all HAM operators around the world. Many stations outside the United States work all 13 Special Event Stations and the two Bonus Stations for a clean sweep! There is an excellent website that contains lots of information about the event and I’d encourage our readers to take a look at it. There is also a Yahoo! Group for the event this year which contains additional information.

We hope that our readers will spend some time next week working the event. It’s a great thing for US operators to do over the July 4th Holiday. I hope to see meet some of our readers on the air as part of the event. See you in the pileup!

– Fred (AB1OC)