Flight of the Bumblebees is getting close.    July 28^th will soon be here.  

Bumblebee Number requests are still coming in.  As of today, there are 145 Bumblebees signed up to go out and operate portable in some fresh air location.  The Bumblebees will be everywhere from Maine to California and Florida to Washington.  Not in every state, but pretty darn close.  We will also have Bumblebees in Canada, and at least one in a DX location.  They will be operating from mountain tops, parks, beaches, local fields, back yards, etc.

Let me address this to the Home Stations:

Your challenge is to work as many of these Bumblebees as possible using 5W CW.  On as many bands as possible.  You have the advantage of having better permanent antennas, but you may encounter pileups since Home Stations will outnumber Bumblebees.. 

You can work the same Bumblebee once on each band – each band will count as another Contact and another Bumblebee worked.   While you can also work other Home Stations from your Home Station, the scoring is weighted toward working Bumblebees.

Let me give you an example:

• Working 1 Bumblebee and 9 other Home Stations results in a Total Score of 30 
• Working 10 Bumblebees results in a Total Score of 300

Not everyone will be in it for the Score, but it is always nice to have bragging rights.

Of course propagation will not support it, but with 145 Bumblebees, and 5 bands available (10-15-20-40-80), a Home Station theoretically has 725 Bumblebees out there to find and work.  Chasing Bumblebees will easily fill up the whole 4 hours of this event.

Good Luck.  And have fun.

Adventure Radio Society – Rules are at : https://ars-qrp.com

73,

Jody – K3JZD