Posts Tagged ‘operating event’
10-10-10 Event-Happy B-day WØC-SOTA
April 21st, 2021 | 
Author: 
WG0AT/Steve
May 1st, 2010 – WGØAT/Steve sent a CQ from Mount Herman in Colorado and thus inaugurated the birth of Summits On The Air (SOTA) in WØ land with 33 CW contacts around the world.
Fast forward to today, Steve is still sending CQs from Mount Herman (WØC/FR-Ø63), and other peaks, almost on a daily basis but he also inspired countless hams (incl. yours truly) to join a growing bunch of people who love the outdoors and combine their hiking activities with their radio hobby.
Some statistics… during the last 10+ years the Colorado Association (WØC) grew from:
- 219 initial (seed) summits to a total of 1797 qualifying summits
- a handful of Activators to ~180
- a few chasers to almost 200
These highly motivated men and women of all ages activated more than 7,400 summits, generated more than 40,000 points and 15 Mountain Goats (MG) – many of them double or even six-fold (thanks KXØR/George).
WØC Chasers worked over 90,000 stations around the world, generated almost 500,000 points and 33 Shack-Sloths.
To celebrate our 10th Anniversary1, WØC-SOTA is organizing a 10-10-10 Event2 with a challenge for Activators and Chasers alike.
Activator challenge: Activate 10 (or more) 10K (or higher) summits (in WØC) within 10 days.
Chaser challenge: Chase Activators on 10 different (or more) qualifying WØC summits (10K or higher) within the 10 days.
Event Date: We will kick-off the event in conjunction with the Colorado 14er event on August 7th, 2021 and conclude on August 16th.
Everybody is invited to participate. Plan your vacations and business-trips to Colorado accordingly. Block off these days in your calendar. Get in shape… repair your antennas and radios. It’s a once in a decade event 😉
There will be a ranking of all participants who meet the challenge. Photographer and new SOTA enthusiast Dan Oldfield (NØOLD) is generously donating a personalized and autographed print from his Colorful Colorado collection to each of the top 3 in both challenges.
More details will be announced as soon as they are hashed out on the WØC-SOTA Website (you can subscribe to get the latest updates) and the NA-SOTA group.
For the org. team
KØMOS/Matt
1 It’s actually the 11th Anniversary but the COVID-19 Pandemic and historic Wildfires in Colorado interfered in 2020.
2 All SOTA rules apply
Big shoes to fill!
The 2018 ARRL International Grid Chase follows on the heels of the successful Centennial operating event and the even more successful National Parks On The Air operating event.
The idea is work as many different Maindenhead grid squares as you can, on any band (expect for 60 Meters) using any mode. Contacts made through satellites will count; but contacts made through earthbound repeaters will not.
So how will all these contacts be kept track of? Through Logbook Of The World, of course! So it is imperative that you have an LOTW account as well as the station you are working. When you both upload your logs to LOTW; and you get a match, you get credit for a valid QSO for the ARRL IGC.
While total cumulative results will be posted at the end of the year, the clock will "reset" so to speak, at the beginning of each month. So each month of 2018 will be like a new operating event; or competition. (I hate to use the word "contest", as we all know that contests are forbidden on the WARC bands.)
Should you not know your Maidenhead Grid Square locator, it's easy to find out. You can either look yourself up on QRZ.com, or go to http://www.levinecentral.com/ham/grid_square.php. What's interesting about these two methods is that you might get different results. QRZ tells me that my grid square is FN20to and Levine Central tells me that it's FN20so. No matter ...... for the purposes of the ARRL IGC, you'll only need the first four places. In addition, exchanging the grid square during the QSO is not required. LOTW will keep track of that. I suppose that for those who will go out and activate rare grids, there will be some provision made for identifying what grid square was operated from when uploading contacts into LOTW.
Will this be as successful as the last two events? That remains to be seen. The Centennial Event was huge success and NPOTA was a monster success. In any event, kudos to the ARRL for continuing to come up with ideas to keep Amateur Radio life a little on the spicier side.
72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP - When you care to send the very least!
