ARRL New England Division

The K1USN Radio Club has announced the 1st Annual Autumn New England Parks On The Air event on Saturday, October 16, 2021 from 0000-2359 UTC. Activation from as many different POTAs as possible.

The goal is to have one group/individual at each site to enable the activation of as many NE POTAs as possible.
 
Officially listed POTAs from throughout New England are required.

Maps and lists can be found at <https://parksontheair.com/>.
 
Since this is not a “contest” official log submissions will not be required but summaries would be encouraged. A post-event link will be available at <www.k1usn.com>. 
 
We hope to give the public a chance to learn a bit more about Amateur Radio by obtaining some free pre-event publicity and with the use of informational handouts. Here are samples you could use:

<http://www.bellevuearc.org/docs/WhatisHamRadioFlyerA.pdf>
 
<http://www.arrl.org/file/file/Brochures%20and%20Exhibit%20Materials/What%20is%20Amateur%20Radio%20flyer%208_5x11.pdf>
 
<https://flysnf.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/ham-Radio-Flyer.pdf>
 

The weekend of Oct 16 – 17 is also JOTA weekend and all participants are encouraged to reach out to local Scouting groups: <https://www.jotajoti.info/>.

Remember that this will be a New England-wide event so folks that attend NEAR-Fest on Saturday, October 16th in Deerfield, NH may wish to activate a NH park on the way home.

Okay, who is interested in jumping onboard the NE Autumn POTA event?
 
BTW, Bob, WC1N, has created a spreadsheet so that we can keep track of individuals/clubs as they sign on. You can sign up at: <http://www.ilovepota.com/index.php>.
 

 
For those of you with additional questions or comments please reply to <k1rv@arrl.net>.
 

Dan Thayer, W1CDT, writes on the ctfoxhunter list on September 18, 2021 at at 5:13 PM:

Greetings Fox hunters:

FB-3 has been deployed.

146.550 MHz Simplex; CTCSS 114.8 Hz

 UPON REACHING THE “HIDE,” HUNTERS ARE ENCOURAGED TO PARK ON THE PUBLIC ROAD, AND WALK INTO THE PROPERTY.

(THERE IS NO PLACE TO TURN AROUND)

It is located in the Town of Stafford, CT. 

It may be heard in parts of Stafford and Tolland.

As there is no starting point for finding the FB, it is recommended that as you go about your regular travels, you periodically try to activate the FB.

You may also try from home.

To try to activate the FB, set your radio to the 2 meter simplex frequency of 146.550 MHz, with a CTCSS of 114.8 Hz. Next, key your transmitter, ID and then send a DTMF “1”. Having done that, unkey your transmitter and listen.

If the FB can hear you (and you can hear it) you will hear its very distinctive sound.

It will transmit for 30 seconds, ID and then go back to sleep.

Once someone has been able to hear it, please report that general location to the other fox hunters, by replying to this message (This needn’t be a place where you can hear it very well, just a place from where it can be heard.

You can make it transmit as often as you find necessary to locate the FB.  

You do not actually have to touch the box to claim finding it.

FBs are located within 500 feet of a safe place to park. While unimproved (dirt) roads may be involved, they will be ones that are passable using a regular passenger car.

Dan, W1CDT 

Shirley Márquez Dúlcey, KE1L, writes on the NEQRP mailing list:

QRP Afield 2021 is TOMORROW! As always, it is held on the third Saturday of September, which is September 18 this year; as in the past few years, it runs from 1500-2100Z (11am-5pm EDT). You can read the rules here: https://www.newenglandqrp.org/qrp-afield-2018/ (still mostly correct).

Our weekend always has a number of other operating events going on, perhaps because it’s the final weekend of summer. Five QSO parties overlap some or all of our operating period: Iowa, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Texas, and Washington (the Salmon Run). There is also a major international contest, the Scandinavian Activity Contest (they were booming into NH last year; I worked a couple of them on 40 CW!), and this year we have Wisconsin Parks on the Air. There will surely also be some activations in programs including POTA, SOTA, and IOTA, and some special event stations. Here in MA there is one to commemorate the 100th anniversary of broadcast station WBZ; it will use the special call signs W1W, W1B, W1Z, and WB1Z. Also keep an ear out for the Chowdercon station, W1C; that will have NEQRP members operating portable from an island in Portsmouth NH.

This year, contacts with stations in other operating events are explicitly allowed. (If you can’t beat them join them!) You are not required to complete the full QRP Afield exchange with those stations; instead, you should use the exchange required by the other event. (Their logging software probably isn’t set up to record your power level or NEQRP number.) We encourage you to submit logs to any contests you make contacts in, even if you only make one or two contacts; the organizers use your data to check other logs.

I’m also introducing a new bonus. Any contact where both operators send a NEQRP number and submit logs that contain a matching contact is worth two points instead of the usual one. The normal power, location, and S/P/C multipliers still apply. That’s meant to encourage people to make some QRP Afield contacts. (Don’t have a member number? Membership in the New England QRP Club is free and open to all hams. Send email to kk1x@kk1x.net with the subject Join.)

You can work each station once per band per mode. For our purposes there are three modes: CW, voice (any voice mode including digital voice), and digital (everything else: RTTY, PSK31, JT65, FT8, SSTV, fax — if it’s not Morse Code and doesn’t involve a microphone it goes here). All bands other than WARC bands and 60 meters are allowed, but you’ll find most of the QRP Afield activity on 40 and 20 meter CW. (The only bands and modes that appeared in 2020 logs were 80, 40, and 20 meter CW.) Perhaps 15 will have an opening this year, and consider trying 80 to work some nearby stations, especially if you are in or near one of the states with a QSO party.

A field station must use non-permanent antennas and be powered by something other than the commercial power grid or a motor-driven generator. Usually that means batteries. No minimum distance from your house is required; operating from your porch or yard is fine. That said, we encourage you to get out and operate from a location away from home!

Chowdercon is also tomorrow! Carl recently sent out a message about that.  The weather forecast looks decent: mostly cloudy through 1 pm, clearing to partly cloudy after that, with high temperatures in the low 70s and a 15% chance of rain throughout the day. Showers are likely in the late evening but people will be off the island well before that.

Larry Krainson, W1AST, writes:

Just a reminder that this weekend is the WBZ 100th Anniversary special event! There will be four special event stations (W1W, W1B, W1Z & WB1Z) in total and a very nice QSL card will be made available whether you work one station or all four. Be sure to get on the air and work these stations this weekend! The event starts at 1300z/9:00 AM EDT September 17 and ends at 0359z September 20/11:59 PM EDT September 19. There will be operations on SSB, CW, FT8 & digital modes and satellites as well as all bands and all modes. You should hear the stations on FM, DMR and D-star too.

There will be many opportunities to work one or all of the stations and earn a very special QSL card commemorating the 100th anniversary of WBZ’s first transmission on September 19, 1921.

More info on the event at https://nediv.arrl.org/wbz100/ and on the QRZ pages for the four callsigns.