Greetings ADXA Folks,

As has been noted in a couple of previous posts, this weekend is the IARU HF World Championship contest that begins at 1200 UTC Saturday (7:00 AM local time Saturday morning) and runs for 24 hours, ending Sunday morning at 1159 UTC (6:59 AM local time). The exchange is your ITU Zone (NOT CQ Zone) or the abbreviation for the IARU member society’s headquarters station. W1AW will send “ARRL” and you will hear other stations with callsigns such as “DA0HQ”, the German society that will send “DARC”. You will also hear NU1AW/0, the IARU HQ station callsign being operated this year from K0IR’s station in Minnesota. The report they will send is “IARU”. Additionally, you will also hear exchanges such as “AC” for a member of the IARU Administrative Council or R1, R2, or R3 for an IARU regional representative. If you’re not actively participating in the contest but just want to pick up a few new ones on a band or mode then the exchange won’t be of importance to you other than you need to send your ITU zone, which is Zone 7 here in Arkansas. As IARU Secretary and a member of the Administrative Council I will be sending “AC” as my exchange and it is a multiplier!

This is a dual mode contest so stations will be active on phone and CW during this period.

A joint event this year is the World Radiosport Team Championship (WRTC), informally known as the “Olympics” of amateur radio. It is held every four years during the IARU contest and competing teams must qualify in the previous years to earn a slot in the competition. This year there are 50 teams from all over the world competing from locations in England. Arkansas and ADXA folks N5DX and K5GO have been past competitors who have qualified. The WRTC stations will be using select 1x1 callsigns, assigned by the WRTC committee, and those callsigns won’t be known or revealed to the teams until just prior to the start of the event.

The IARU HF World Championship is held annually on the second full weekend of July event was establish to highlight the International Amateur Radio Union (IARU) and its member societies. The IARU is the worldwide federation of national amateur radio organizations, such as ARRL, RSGB, DARC, etc. Its membership consists of more than 160 member-societies in as many countries and separate territories and represents amateur radio on the international level at the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) and World Radiocommunications Conference (WRC).

73 Joel W5ZN