[nrv-hams] Ham radio fun this weekend

[Kay Craigie]

Work the world this weekend! The IARU (International Amateur Radio Union) HF
World Championship contest starts at 1200 UTC (8 AM EDT) and goes for 24
hours. It's both phone and CW. In this contest everybody can work everybody,
so you can log some new countries as well as some new USA states.

The exchange (what we send and receive) for most people is signal report and
ITU zone. For us the ITU (International Telecommunications Union) zone is 8.
A map of all ITU zones is at
http://www.mapability.com/ei8ic/maps/ituzone.php.

Some stations will be sending a different exchange.  Headquarters stations
will send signal report and the abbreviation for their IARU member society -
ARRL, RAC (Radio Amateurs of Canada), FMRE (the Mexican national society),
and so on. Members of the IARU Administrative Council and the three IARU
regional Executive committees send "AC," "R1,""R2," and "R3" as appropriate.
So don't be thrown for a loop if a station sends you something other than a
zone number. The toughest one for me when I was first in this contest was
the abbreviation for the Hungarian national society:  MRASZ. Try that on for
size when you're a newbie at CW contesting! There's a list of some of the HQ
stations posted at http://www.dailydx.com/iaru-13.htm.

We can work each station once per band and mode.  For example, if I work
N4HY on 40 meters phone, I can work him again on 40 meters CW.

Here's the ARRL news story on the event, which explains that W1AW will be
signing W1AW/4 because it will be operated from Virginia. Not from my house!
Read all about it at
http://www.arrl.org/news/iaru-2013-contest-features-hq-stations-wrtc-2014-st
ation-test.

Get on the air and have fun. Of course, if we hear thunder we stop operating
and disconnect the antenna.  No operating event is worth the risk of
becoming a crispy critter.

Fingers crossed for no thunderstorms! 73 - Kay N3KN