EuCW Bulletin No 2024/03 ======================== 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)