EuCW Bulletin No 2024/03
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1) Summer conditions are now prevailing and the bands normally starts to
become alive when darkness appears. It seems to me actually that CW
activity also has increased somewhat. European CW bands have always been
quite active even in the past years, but there is much more DX coming
through due to the improved propagation. I estimate this will continue to
be so, and therefore ask you to support this general activity trend with
your own personal activity. Personally I have lately mainly been QRV
remotely using SM6LRR and SJ6R (in contests) from Indonesia, Kazakhstan,
Russia and Mongolia. My next business trip (this week) will be to China,
but unfortunately no Ham activity planned this time. I may have some future
location change from Jakarta to another DXCC country. You will be the first
one to know when and if this happens.

2) The first half-year of Snakes & Ladders is now finished. Almost 50
callsigns have participated. All CW friends are invited to participate in
the next round from July to December 2024. The number of documented
contacts varied from 1000 to over 1500 per month. This is a nice amount of
rag chews far away from contesting. Many contacts are indeed way longer
than the required 5 minutes.

3) The EUCW/AGCW QRS week triggered almost 500 QSOs at slow pace. 28 logs
were received, but the true success remains outside the statistics.
Numerous newcomers were present, some could be identified as participants
in recent CW training courses. However, only 7 EUCW clubs were represented.
The most active clubs were AGCW from Germany and OECWG from Austria.
Experienced operators are invited to call CQ at slow speed. Therefore,
awards were issued to those who created the most impressive counts of spots
in the reverse beacon network. The winner in the 100 W class was spotted
over 3000 times in slow speed. He finished 2nd in class A with 36 QSOs.
Congratulations on the exposure of such patience.

4) Immediately after the QRS week the Activity Week concerning Morse code
as an intangible cultural heritage was held by AGCW and DARC. The
participation rate left to be desired though. Maybe some of us were already
exhausted by the QRS week. Indeed, it requires a lot of patience,
perseverance and dedication to stick to slow speeds for five days in a row.

5) The AGCW QRS Net (3555.5 kHz) on Tuesday evenings struggled with poor
conditions caused by both daylight and D-layer attenuation (as a result by
solar X-ray flares). It was decided that the net starts at 19 hours local
time from mid-May to mid-September (20h during the rest of the year). There
is no particular network traffic, the net control station runs QSOs at slow
speed, working one newcomer after the other for at least an entire hour.
All the net control stations use club calls (DL0/DF0/DK0) or special calls,
usually DL0SLW. At present, we have 4 net control operators in the German
states of NRW, SX, RP, and BW. (see agcw.de/funkaktivitaeten/qrs-net). All
are welcome.  (Thanks a lot Martin DL1GBZ for topics #2-5 in this
newsletter!)

6) FOC (First Class CW Operators' Club) has a new nice upcoming activity
called MDQP (Memorial Day QSO Party). Although the activity is planned for
November 1st to 2nd, I think it is still appropriate already now to promote
this upcoming activity, so we can add it to our CW calendars. Memorial Day
QSO Party (MDQP) is an activity providing participants with an opportunity
to honour amateur radio operators who are now Silent Keys. MDQP is being
sponsored and managed by FOC and is open to ALL licensed amateurs: The idea
is for each participant to honour one Silent Key. They might have a special
memory to share, along with the callsign and name of one who went before
us. MDQP begins at 09:00 UTC on 1. November 2024, ending at 08:59 UTC on 2.
November 2024. Certificates will be available for all participants
submitting an ADIF log and there will be awards for the highest number of
QSOs made, the runner-up with the second highest number of QSOs and the
participant sharing the most highly-regarded detail about their chosen
Silent Key. Of course, this is a CW- only event (suggested CW Speed is 15
up to 30 WPM). At a minimum, each exchange must include RST, QTH and Name
of operator, together with the callsign of the Silent Key in honour;
additionally, sharing the name and at least one item of interest about the
SK operator is encouraged. A participant may honour more than one single SK
but only one SK call per band. QSOs may be on the 6, 10, 15, 20, 40, 80,
and 160 meter bands only. MDQP QSOs are not permitted on WARC bands (30m,
17m, 12m) or 60m. Stations may be worked once per band.  There are two
sections, Single Operator Low Power (SOLP) using 100 Watts or less and
Single Operator High Power (SOHP) running more than 100 Watts up to their
local legal limit. More information on the event is available at
https://g4foc.org or contact IZ2FME at MDQP@g4foc.org, or at
iz2fme@amsat.org. Many thanks in advance and good luck!  (Thanks Michele
IZ2FME for info and for agreeing to lead this activity for FOC)

7) OK QRP Club celebrates this year 40 years since its foundation. At this
occasion the club issues the “ 40 OK-QRP-C “ certificate. There are also
Special Event Stations OL40QRP, OK5SLP and OK1OQI, all valid for the award.

More details can be found on the OK QRP Club web page: https://okqrp.fud.cz/
or at the OL40QRP QRZ.com (Thanks Pavel OK2BMA for the good contribution).

8) NTC (Netherlands Telegraphy Club):  On April 16 was the first of the
bi-yearly AGCW-NTC friendship QSO party. Although not so many participants
it is always a nice event to meet members of both the clubs. This QSO party
is held twice a year on the third Tuesday in April and October. The
responsible person is Lothar DL1DXL. More info athttps://
pi4ntc.nl/agcw-ntcqp. Last month NTC issued number 47 of the W-NTC-M
(worked NTC members) award. You need to work with 25 NTC members, the award
is free and available as a PDF document. Info at https://pi4ntc.nl/wntcm.
The NTC member list is available on our website. The monthly QSO parties
remain popular. Despite the worsening propagation on 80 meters considering
the time of the party (19-20 UTC), we have nearly 40 participants every
month. A great way to spent one hour at the radio!(Thanks Joop PG4I for the
info).


9) The GQRP Club, one of the three original founders of EuCW, will have its
annual Convention in Telford, on August 31st and September 1st. The
Convention is the main event of the ongoing celebrations for the 50th
anniversary of the Club. There will be a buildhaton on Saturday afternoon,
followed by a simple reception, and a fantastic line-up of QRP talks on
Sunday morning. The Club will also be active on air for the whole month of
September, with all the regional variations of the Club Callsign (Gx5LOW)
and several other special callsigns operated by Club members across Europe.
A special award will be available for contacts with the Club callsigns and
overseas stations.  More information will be posted on the Club webpage at
https://gqrp.com/ (Thanks Enzo M0KTZ for details).

73 de Mats RM2D (SM6LRR, SJ6R and YB0LRR)