Category Archives: Awards

Posts related to operating awards

The 13 Colonies Special Event Begins Today

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13 Colonies Special Event Certificate

13 Colonies Special Event Certificate

The 13 Colonies Special Event begins today. This event commemorates the July 4th Independence Day in the United States of America. There are stations (K2A through K2L) on the air in each of the states that were one of the original 13 Colonies here in the USA. There is also a bonus station at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, PA (WM3PEN). If you work one or more of these stations, you can send for a QSL card with the state’s flag plus you can request a certificate (shown above – see the website for details on how to request a certificate). If you work all of the colonies/states, you can receive a certificate indicating this. We will be operating as K2K, one of the New Hampshire Stations in the digital (RTTY & PSK) and SSB phone modes. Richie (W1STT) will also be operating as K2K in SSB mode and Mike (N1IW) will be operating as K2K in CW mode. We will be on all bands 80m – 10m (including some 160m, 6m and 2m operation if there is interest). This event has become fairly large – the 13 Colonies Stations completed over 62,000 QSOs as part of the 2012 event. The event welcomes all Amateur Radio Operators around the world. Operations begin this morning and run through Saturday, July 6th. I hope that some of our readers will find some time to work us as part of this event. You can find our operating frequency on the spotting cluster or at this 13 colonies spotting cluster page.  To our readers in the USA – have a very happy and safe July 4th and God Bless America!

– Fred (AB1OC) and Anita (AB1QB)

QRP And Other Operating Awards

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ARRL DXCC - QRP

ARRL DXCC – QRP

I have been working on a number of operating awards as a means to confirm the performance of our recently completed station and as goals to expand and improve my operating skills. I have gotten to a point where my completed and confirmed QSOs have allowed me to earn several awards. The first award to mention is a recently completed ARRL DXCC using QRP (5 watt) power levels. This award required me to work and confirm 100 DXCC entities (basically 100 countries) using no more than 5 watts for transmitter output power. Completing this award is a good confirmation of our station’s antenna performance. In many cases, the QSO’s needed for this award received 59 or better signal reports confirming the performance of our antenna system.

Worked All States Award - QRP

Worked All States Award – QRP

I very much enjoy working stations using QRP (5 watt) power levels. To this end, I also have completed an ARRL Worked All States Award using SSB Phone and QRP power levels (5 watts). This award was a lot of fun to get and its pretty cool when you work another station in the USA and you get a 59+20 db or 59+10 db signal report and you let the other operator know that you are using QRP 5 watts!

ARRL DXCC - CW Mode

ARRL DXCC – CW Mode

Finally, I have been working diligently on my CW skills and I am very proud to have completed an ARRL DXCC Award (basically 100 countries) using the CW mode. I am really beginning to enjoy CW and it certainly opens the door to a great many DX stations that are difficult to find using any other mode.

I am working on some other awards that are more difficult. A few of these could be considered “lifetime achievement” awards. These include:

  • A 5 Band DXCC Award (100 confirmed DXCC entities on the 5 major bands 80m – 10m; I am also working on endorsements for the 5 WARC bands)
  • The DXCC Challenge Award (1,000 confirmed band countries on 160m – 6m)
  • The CQ WPX Award of Excellence (many confirmed prefixes using all modes, on all bands, and on all continents)

I am getting close on all of these. There are other awards which cater to almost any interest. Some other interesting ones include:

I hope that you will consider working towards one of the many operating awards – it’s a great deal of fun!

– Fred (AB1OC)

QSL!

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QSL Cards Ready To Mail

QSL Cards Ready To Mail

QSL’ing has often been referred to as the “Final Courtesy of a QSO” and it is certainly a lot of fun to send and receive QSL cards from friends and acquaintances that you’ve made on the air from around the world. QSL’ing is also an important part of qualifying for operating awards which help to hone an operator’s skills as well as encourage test and enhancement of your station. To these ends, I am working towards a variety of operating awards including:

These awards require QSOs to be confirmed using a combination of Logbook of the World (LoTW), QSL Cards, and some via eQSL (AG).

I recently switched to the DXLab Suite of logging and DX’ing programs to facilitate the tracking, QSL’ing, and application tasks associated with these and other awards. DXLab includes a very sophisticated set of features for DX’ing and award tracking. The combination of all of the new QSOs made during the three contests I’ve participated in over the last few months plus the enhanced award tracking features in DXLab resulted in a large number of QSOs that needed to be confirmed. It would be wonderful if all Hams used the online QSL’ing services (LoTW and eQSL) to confirm QSOs but this is far from the case. As a result, I decided to create a batch of  QSL card mailings to try to confirm the needed QSOs.

QSL Label Via DXLab

QSL Label Via DXLab

DXLab has many nice features which can be used to print QSL card labels (or complete cards) and to address the outgoing and return envelopes associated with direct QSL requests. It also provides a tool called Pathfinder to aid in the discovery of QSL routes. These tools were very useful in creating some 400+ direct QSL mailings this past weekend plus another 30+ cards that were sent via the ARRL Outbound QSL Bureau. DXLab also handles online QSL’ing via LoTW and eQSL as well as uploading to ClubLog. It would have been quite a chore indeed to generate all of these cards and mailings without DXLab!

I am very much looking forward to getting cards back from all over the world. It makes checking the mailbox fun!

– Fred (AB1OC)