Anita, AB1QB and I have spent a good deal of time this past year helping the Nashua Area Radio Club here in Nashua, NH USA as a way to give back to the Amateur Radio Service. Our work with the Nashua ARC has produced some of the most enjoyable and memorable times of our Amateur Radio experience.
Teaching Nashua Area Radio Club Hosted License Classes
In particular, our contributions to the work that our club is doing around helping people to earn licenses and introducing young people to the Amateur Radio Service has been most rewarding.
Abby, KC1FFX Operating our GOTA Station during Nashua ARC Youth Day
We recently produced a 2016 Highlights video about our Club’s activities and the club’s contributions to the Amateur Radio hobby. We thought that some of our readers here might enjoy the video. You can view it on our club’s home page here.
We improved our contribution to the event in almost every area this year. We had a great balance between SSB and CW with some 28% of our contacts using CW! We also had a better balance of contacts outside NA – 15% being DX. Another interesting stat is that we worked about 1/2 of all of the Counties in the United States.
Interesting K2K NH Contacts in 2015
Operating in a major Special Event like 13 Colonies always produces some interesting contacts. We worked some pretty interesting DX stations including a QRP to QRP CW contact between New Hampshire and Japan. You can see from the concentration of our contacts around the world in the map above (click to enlarge).
2015 Thirteen Colonies QSL Cards
In addition to the really nice certificate for working the event, there is a very nice collection of QSL cards available for working each of the Thirteen Colonies and the two bonus stations. Many states, including New Hampshire, redesigned their QSL cards this year which adds to the fun of collecting them. You can find QSL information for the event here.
K2K New Hampshire QSL!
The QSLs are rolling in! We are using the DXLab Suite to automate the printing/QSL’ing for K2K New Hampshire this year and this allows us to keep up with the incoming QSL requests on a daily basis. We are also providing QSL’ing via LoTW, eQSL, and ClubLog.
I hope that everyone enjoyed the event! We certainly did. We’re looking forward to seeing everyone again next year!
The 2015 Thirteen Colonies Special Event begins today! There are stations in each of the states that grew from the original Thirteen Colonies plus two bonus stations – WM3PEN in Philadelphia, PA and a GB13COL in the United Kingdom. We have redesigned the K2K NH QSL card this year as part of the 2015 event theme – Patriots and Founders of the Republic. we have a great team of operators for the New Hampshire Colony this year. You can check them out here. You can find where the event stations are operating by using the 13 Colonies Spotting cluster.
2015 13 Colonies Special Event Certificate
In addition to collecting the QSL cards from each of the state and bonus special event stations, there is a very nice certificate available for working one or more of the 13 Colonies stations. See the event website for details.
I hope that our readers will take some time and participate in the 13 Colonies Special Event this year. Its great fun for all involved. Happy July 4th United States of America!
It is once again time for our annual 2014 Year in Review post. First, I’d like to thank our readers for their continued interest in our Blog. Our blog was viewed about 100,00 times in 2014 from 165 countries around the world. You, our readers have made 2014 our busiest year yet and this provides Anita (AB1QB) and me with great encouragement to continue to provide content for our readers.
2014 was a very busy year in Amateur Radio for us. Our activities included a continued focus on station building, contesting, WRTC 2014, special events, providing presentations to help other in the hobby learn about new things, attending several HAM Events, progress on operating awards, and most importantly – time spent on the air operating.
microHAM Station Master Deluxe Antenna Controller
We upgraded our fixed station to include a microHAM Station Automation system this year. This was a major project that added some nice SO2R capabilities to our Multi-one station as well as automated the sharing of our antennas between our two SO2R Operating positions. More of this project can be found here:
Eggbeater LEO Satellite Antennas And Preamps Systems On Tower
We also added LEO Satellite capabilities to our station with the addition of some new antennas and electronics on our tower. This allowed us to make our first contacts through LEO birds with linear transponders. Our articles on this project include:
Our final major station building project was the construction of a state of the art mobile HF station in our Ford F-150 pickup truck. We did this project in phases starting with a simple setup using a 100W radio and HAM Stick antennas through the installation of a Screwdriver Antenna System for the 160m – 10m HF bands and concluding with the installation of an amplifier to enable high power mobile HF operation. You can view the articles on this project here:
Anita (AB1QB) and I continued to be active in several contests this year. We both continued to develop our skills as contesters and our scores and place in the rankings reflected this. You can read more about our contesting activities and what we learned in the following articles:
WRTC 2014 Hollis Site Competitors, Support Team And Referee
We were also fortunate to host one of the WRTC 2014 competition sites. Along with our friend Scott Anderson, NE1RD, Anita and I acted as site managers for the only WRTC 2014 Competition Site in New Hampshire. You can read more about our WRTC 2014 experiences here.
13 Colonies Special Event QSL Card For K2K New Hampshire
We make it a priority to develop a significant amount of our Amateur Radio time to helping others in the hobby learn new things. In addition to writing this Blog, Anita and I try to create and deliver several presentations each year on a variety of topics of interest to the Amateur Radio Community. Our presentation this year included an update of our presentation on Amateur Radio Station Design and Construction and an Introductory Presentation on the DXLab Software Suite. We are always interested in working with Amateur Radio Clubs to deliver the presentation either in person where practice or over the web.
Anita (AB1QB) and I with Bob Heil (K9EID)
We had the fortune to meet some of the legends in Amateur Radio this past year. Anita and I had the opportunity to get meet Bob Heil, K9EID and to appear on his Ham Nation podcast. Bob is an amazing gentlemen and we feel truly fortunate to have the opportunity to get to know him. We also had the opportunity to meet Fred Lloyd, AA7BQ, the President and Founder of QRZ.com. Fred visited our station and did an article about our station on QRZ.com. Anita and I both learned a great deal about HAM Radio and how it came to be what it is today as a result of the time these fine folks spent with us.
Joe Taylor’s WSJT Presentation At the ARRL Centennial Convention
Amateur Radio Conventions and HAM Fests were a major part of our Amateur Radio fun again this year. We were fortunate to attend and speak at the ARRL Centennial Convention in Hartford, CT USA this year – truly a once in a lifetime Amateur Radio experience. We also attended the Dayton Hamvention in 2014 where we had a chance to see all of the latest and greatest in Amateur Radio Equipment.
Our 2014 QSOs By Callsign
We were quite active on the air making almost 26,000 contacts between the two of us. As you can see from the graphic above, about 45% of our contacts were as part of Special Event Operations. We also made a little over 500 contacts from our mobile station, working over 100 DXCC entities in 2014 from the mobile.
We mostly operated in the SSB phone mode in 2014. Anita and I both continue to work on our CW skills and we managed a little over 800 QSOs using CW in 2014. Anita was very active in the RTTY mode as part of her RTTY contesting efforts.
13 Colonies K2K New Hampshire QSL!
All of this operating resulted in quite a bit of QSL activity. We sent a total of almost 4,200 QSL cards in 2014!
We again made a video showing all of our contacts around the world in 2014. As you can see from the video, we were fortunate to work quite a bit of DX in 2014.
Anita and I had a lot of fun with Amateur Radio in 2014. We are looking forward to another great year of HAM Radio fun in 2015. We hope to share some of what we learn and our experiences with our readers here on our Blog.
The Nashua Area Radio Club in New Hampshire, USA is celebrating its 35th Anniversary this year. N1FD is our Club’s call sign. Layne, AE1N helped the club put together an on-air Special Event this past weekend to celebrate our Anniversary. Anita, AB1QB and I had the chance to operate as part of the Special Event celebration and we had a great time doing it.
N1FD Operations Summary
The team of N1FD operators made over 1,500 contacts as part of the Special Event. We operated in SSB, CW and Digital (mostly RTTY) modes on all HF Bands 160m – 10m (except for 60m) during the four day event. We had a great response from the Amateur Community Worldwide.
N1FD QSOs Around The World
The N1FD team worked all U.S. States and a total of 67 DXCC Entities. There were some memorable QSOs during our operations. One that stands our for me was a call from Alex, RI1ANC in Antarctica! It was nice to chat with Alex and he told me that the temperature there was -68 °C!
N1FD Special Event QSL Card
We are working on a picture QSL card for those who worked us during our Special Event. It features pictures from our club’s Field Day activities. Our logs from the event are available on ClubLog and we will be uploading our contacts to LoTW and eQSL as well. You can see if you are in our logs by clicking here. If you worked the N1FD Special Event and would like to receive a QSL card, you can send an SASE (U.S. Contacts) or SAE with return postage (DX Contacts) to our address on QRZ.com.
We’d like to thank everyone who took the time to work our Special Event and to help us celebrate our 35th Anniversary.
I was fortunate to operate as one of the W1AW portable stations as part of the ARRL Centennial QSO Party again this past week. The first time the state of New Hampshire was on, I was only able to devote a limited amount of time to this operation. This time, I was able to set more time aside and operate about 4 hours on each of 6 of the 8 days that W1AW/1 New Hampshire was on the air this past week. During this time, I was able to make 1,925 contacts averaging a little over 120 QSOs for each hour that I operated.
Mode/Band
QSOs
% Total
SSB Phone
2878
98%
RTTY
47
2%
160m
207
7%
80m
77
3%
40m
379
13%
20m
1103
38%
17m
799
27%
12m
79
3%
10m
281
10%
Total
2925
100%
The table above shows the final stats for my operations as W1AW/1 NH this past week. I mostly concentrated on the SSB Phone mode with a bit of RTTY operations on the last day. As one would expect, 20m and 40m were the most popular bands.
I encountered pileups on all of the days that I operated with the largest ones being on the first evening on 20m We had a significant solar CME event during the operation and subsequent Auroral activity which created some interesting band conditions. In particular, almost all of the 10m and 12m contacts were done on Thursday and Friday evenings using backscatter propagation. I was unable to hear much with my antennas pointed at the folks that I was trying to work on 10m and 12m so I tried pointing the beams directly south to test backscatter propagation. I also asked the folks in the pileup to do the same. This mode of operation resulted in about 350 QSOs on 10m and 12m! This was also great news for the close-in stations as this mode of propagation allowed folks in adjacent states to work New Hampshire on the higher bands.
It was great fun operating as W1AW/1 New Hampshire this past week. I wish there would be another chance to do this but we’ll have to wait awhile for the ARRL’s next big birthday to come around.
13 Colonies Special Event QSL Card For K2K New Hampshire
The 13 Colonies Special Event had another record year, completing over 108,800 contacts around the world during the 6 days of the event. This was about 25% more contacts than last year. We added the WARC bands to our operations this year which provided folks a chance to work several US states on these bands. This, no doubt, helped to increase interest in the event. The NH Operators had a good year this year completing over 9,000 contacts. I operated mostly SSB phone on 160m – 6m and made over 6,800 contacts during the 6 days of the event.
Category
QSOs
% QSOs
States
DXCCs
SSB
7182
79%
50
71
CW
1546
18%
48
58
Digital (RTTY + PSK)
293
3%
26
36
160m
3
<1%
3
1
80m
82
1%
28
5
40m
2008
22%
46
32
30m
246
3%
34
26
20m
2936
31%
49
59
17m
1473
17%
49
53
15m
1443
17%
47
59
12m
268
3%
41
15
10m
361
4%
39
9
6m
201
2%
31
4
2014 13 Colonies QSO Statistics for the K2K NH Hampshire Stations
I thought it might be interesting for our readers to see how an operation like this breaks down in terms of bands and modes. The table above provides these stats for this year’s K2K NH operation. As you can see, the daytime band activity reflects the state of the solar cycle with most contacts being made on 20m, 17m and 15m. Operations on the 40m band are primarily during nighttime and are essential for many folks in the states close to New Hampshire to make a contact with us. SSB Phone is usually the most popular mode in this event with CW also being quite popular. It’s a little hard to grasp the diversity of the contacts that stations make during an event like this. Here are some additional stats for our operation in NH this year:
DXCC’s Worked – 82 (A good portion of a DXCC – not bad for a “US” event.)
DXCC Band Points Worked – 263 (A band point is a given DXCC on a unique band.)
CQ Zones Worked – 27
Unique Callsign Prefixes Worked – 1,061
Worked All 50 US States On The SSB Phone Mode
US Counties Worked – 1,416
IOTAs Worked – 60
6m Grids Squares Worked – 94 (Almost a VUCC! Some DX from EU in here.)
Contacts Made To All 6 Continents
As you can see from this list, the event has become quite popular with folks outside the United Sates. There are quite a few DX operators that complete a sweep, working all 13 Colonies and the two Bonus Stations (WM3PEN and W3FT).
6m Opening During The 13 Colonies Special Event
We had some very nice 6m Es Openings during the event. I worked a couple of these as K2K making about 200 contacts on 6m and working 94 unique grid squares – almost a VUCC on 6m! Amazingly, the conditions were good enough to generate a pileup for the duration of one of these openings. This was the first year that I have had the chance to focus on making contacts on the Magic Band and the 6m openings during the event were a nice chance to make some more contacts on 6m.
AB1QB’s 13 Colonies Sweep Certificate
Many operators who participate in the event do so with the goal of working all 13 Colonies and the two bonus stations for a clean sweep. Ken Villone, KU2US is the event coordinator and he provides a nice certificate each year for folks who work one or more of The Colony Stations. Anita, AB1QB completed her sweep this year and the picture above shows the nice certificate that she received for doing so. If you worked one or more of the 13 Colonies Stations, you can apply for a certificate here.
K2K New Hampshire QSL!
Many folks work the event to collect our QSL cards and for Worked All States Award Credit. This results in quite a few QSL cards being sent! The picture above shows the outgoing QSL response about 1 week after the event. This batch contained about 700 cards. The total QSL’s we will send in response to 2014 operations as K2K New Hampshire will be approximately 1,000 cards. We added ClubLog OQRS, LoTW and eQSL as alternatives to confirm contacts with the K2K New Hampshire Stations this year and many folks have used these to confirm contacts as well.
As the 2014 13 Colonies Special Event and the follow-up QSL’ing draws to a close, I have many great memories to look back on. I am already looking forward to the 2015 event. Ken has created a really great looking certificate for the 2015 event and you can see a preview here. I hope to contact many of readers as part of the 2015 13 Colonies Special Event!
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.
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!
Anita (AB1QB) and I particularly enjoy operating as part of Special Events. We have been part of the 13 Colonies Special Event for several years now as one of the New Hampshire stations and we were anxious to help with the ARRL Centennial QSO Party as one of the W1AW/1 Stations for New Hampshire. We’ve been operating in both RTTY and SSB Phone modes for a few days now and have made over 1,200 contacts as part of the event so far. As I sit here writing this, Anita is operating as W1AW/1 on 17m SSB Phone.
Anita and I were quite active on the bands in 2013. Together we made 20,650+ contacts from a combination of our home and mobile stations and we worked a combined 259 DXCC Entities.
Combined 2013 QSOs By Band
We were active on all of the Amateur Bands available in the USA from 160m through 70cm except for the 60m and 1.25m bands. The picture above shows the distribution of our QSOs across the bands in 2013. Both of us participated in quite a few contests in 2013 and this resulted in the 5 major contest bands dominating our operating activity. I did quite a lot of work on the 160m band this year and I participated in several 160m contests to gain experience and to begin working towards a DXCC on this band. We worked a total of 50 DXCC Entities on 160m in 2013. Our 6m, 2m, and 440 MHz (70cm) contacts were made mostly during VHF/UHF contests that I participated in.
Combined 2013 QSOs By Mode
We like to operate using many different modes. Anita (AB1QB) does quite a bit of RTTY contesting and she accounted for the bulk of the activity in the digital modes from our station in 2013. I made it a point to become active using the CW mode this year and I made 1,550+ contacts using CW in 2013 including participation in several CW contests. Operations in SSB Phone mode dominated our activity this year mostly due to our operations in SSB Phone contests and as one of the New Hampshire Stations in the 2013 Colonies Special Event this year where we made a combined total of 6,200+ contacts.
QSL Cards Ready To Mail
We really enjoy sending and receiving QSL cards. We sent 5,800+ QSL cards this year, averaging approximately 110 cards sent each week. We also QSL’ed via eQSL and Logbook Of The World. I am often asked what percentage of our QSL requests are confirmed. For 2013, we received confirmations for 67% of our direct/bureau cards, 31% of the QSOs uploaded to eQSL, and 37% of the QSOs upload to LoTW. These numbers will undoubtedly rise a time goes by.
Anita has held a DXCC for some time and has been focusing on a number of JARL Awards. She completed her Japan Century Cities Award for confirming contacts with 100 cities in Japan in 2013.
AB1QB Operating In The BARTG RTTY Contest
Contesting was a big part of the operations from our station this year. I was active in several major SSB and CW contests this year and Anita was active in quite a few major RTTY and phone contests as well. We are both licensed for less that 3 years and have been competing in the Rookie or Novice categories in most contests and we have been doing quite well. Anita took 5th place in the world in the 2013 BARTG RTTY Contest and she has placed 1st in our call area in several of the 2013 ARRL Rookie Roundups in both SSB Phone and RTTY.
2013 CQ Worldwide WPX SSB Certificate
I placed 1st in North America/2nd in the World in the 2013 CQ WPX SSB Contest (Rookie High Power) and 1st in North America/2nd in the World in the 2013 CQ WPX CW Contest (Rookie High Power). Contests have provided us a great deal of operating experience and have contributed greatly to our completion of several operating awards.
Mobile Installation In Ford F-150
Station Building was a big part of our Amateur Radio experience again in 2013. We installed a mobile HF setup in our truck and did quite a bit of mobile HF operating. We made 165 contacts from our mobile station in 2013 and worked 41 DXCC entities.
WSJT EME QSO – Waterfall
I also made my first Earth-Moon-Earth Contacts on 2m in 2013. I made 30 contacts on 2m using the moon as a reflector, working a total of 16 DXCC Entities this way.
AB1QB Operating The Flex-3000 Software Defined Radio
We added a Flex-3000 Software Defined Radio (SDR) to our station in 2013 and have been using it to learn about this new technology. The performance and operating capabilities of SDR are making SDR a big part of the future of Amateur Radio in our opinion.
8-Circle Receive Array System Diagram
Antenna projects were also a part of our station building work in 2013. We installed an 8-Circle Receive Array System for 160m – 40m and this new antenna system helped us a great deal with DX’ing and contesting on 160m and 80m. We also began the reinstallation of our BigIR Vertical Antenna but the onset of winter here in New Hampshire caused us to delay the completion of this project until spring. Finally, we made the switch to the excellent DXLab logging and DX’ing software suite. DXLab helped us a great deal with QSL’ing and tracking our progress toward operating awards.
2013 Field Day CW Station Operations
We were part of the 2013 Field Day team at our local radio Club (PART in Westford, MA). We provided and managed the digital station as well as the setup of a portion of the antenna systems for our club’s field day operations.
ARRL At Dayton 2013
Anita and I attended the Dayton Hamvention again in 2013. The Dayton event is always a great opportunity to see the latest in Amateur Radio equipment. We attended the 2013 Contest University which was held as part of the Dayton Event and used the information that we learned there to continue to improve our contesting skills.
Fred Lloyd AA7BQ, Founder Of QRZ.com
The internet was a big part of our Amateur Radio experience again in 2013. We met Fred Lloyd, AA7BQ who visited us to do an article on QRZ.com on our station. We learned a great deal from Fred during the time that we spent with him as part of this project. We published 47 new articles here on our blog in 2013 and have received over 45,000 views from our readers in 152 countries around the world. We really appreciate the interest from the HAM community and we will continue to publish new articles here in 2014.
As you can tell from this article, 2013 has been a very active year for Anita and I. I’ve created the video above to give you some idea of the contacts that we have been fortunate enough to make around the world in 2013. We hope you enjoy it and we want to thank everyone who has taken the time to work us, to end us a QSL card or to read the articles that we have written here.
