ETH018 - Special Event Stations

Everything Ham Radio Podcast

Hello everybody and welcome back to the Everything Ham Radio Podcast! In this episode we are going to continue with our HF series by talking about Special Event Stations.

What Is A Special Event Station?

A special event station is basically the amateur radio version of an anniversary party. A lot of times, this is something like the anniversary of forming your club, or a certain battle in a war or even the anniversary of a major disaster. At the time of this episode, there are 130 special event stations registered with the ARRL until the end of 2016.

Typically a special event will have a special call sign as well. You can apply for a special 1X1 call sign and be granted one for a short-term. These call signs are typically only good for about a month. Sometimes clubs will have a special vanity call sign for the event instead of a 1X1. On the short Wikipedia article for what a special event station was, they mentioned this:

The National World War One Museum,at the Liberty Memorial, in Kansas City, Missouri, for instance will be having a special event station over the next six years in observance of the centennial of the Great War, under the call sign WW1USA.

We recently had a special event station here where I live celebrating the 180 year of Texas Independance. I unfortunately wasn’t able to participate in it because of moving, but hopefully I will be able to in the future special events that we have planned.

I have participated in a couple special events, and have talked to a few as well. Unfortunately, every time I talk to a special event station, I am using someone else’s call sign so I never get the QSL cards. I think the one that I wish I would’ve been able to get the most happened to me about 16 years ago or so when the Olympics were in Australia. The local hams there had a special event station going and we happened to be at a club camp out on one of the weekends of the Olympics. We had a HF rig setup and somehow managed to talk from Texas to Australia on 10 meters. It was in the peak of the sunspot cycle and it’s was one of the hardest contacts I have ever made, but I got it!

If you would like to find out when a special event station is going on to try to make contact with them, check out theARRL Special Event Station page.

More Than Safe Blog

My wife has started her very own blog describing our journey through the foster care system and things that happen to us and how we dealt with the situation. Some things may just be foster care related but some of the stuff can be used as just general parenting. If you are a parent or are interested in learning a little bit about the foster care system, please check out her blog at MoreThanSafe.com. If you like what you see, subscribe to her email list to get notifications on when she puts up something new.

Packtenna Giveaway

A couple of weeks ago, I reached out to George with Packtenna to talk to him about this episode. I was trying to see about getting a coupon code, or an affiliate link with them. He instead has agreed to donate one of their new PackTenna Mini’s(an $89 value) to one lucky listener of this podcast.

George came through for me and all of you and I got the PackTenna Mini in the mail on Wednesday! I got a surprise as well, not only did he send me one to give away to one lucky listener, but he sent me a second one for me as well! Thanks George! I will be putting it to good use in the near future. I will also be doing a write-up on it this weekend as to my initial impression on it and later on how it work.

Now the moment you have all been waiting for! The winner of the PackTenna Mini giveaway is…

KF5RHI – Richard Slusher!!! Supporting Everything Ham Radio

Over the past couple episode I have told about a service that I was told about called Patreon. This service allows you, my wonderful listeners, to make a totally voluntary and monthly donation to me to help keep my blog and podcast going. You can make a monthly donation of $1, $5, $10 or $25 and you can cancel it anytime. Each level has different things that you will get in return for you contribution and I will be adding more things a little bit later. I am working on getting T-Shirts and a cap and possible some other things as well. If you sign up for a level that I will be adding to now, you will still get the item when I add it to the rewards for that level.

If you don’t want to do a monthly contribution but would rather do just a one time donation, you can go through my paypal link that you can find at the bottom of this post. I would like to thank Cody Williamson for his third donation.

If you are like me and can’t afford to give anything, I totally understand. I wish that I could help support some other people who I listen to, but unfortunately, I this time I can not. One day!

Amateur Radio Club Spotlight

Website: http://ks0lnk.net/ Twitter: @ks0lnk

This club spotlight is not going to be a typical club spotlight because it is not a club per say but a group of amateur radio repeater owners and control operators in state of Kansas. This club was recommended by Todd, KE0HRB who is a new amateur radio operator in Plainville, KS.

According to their website the K-Link Repeater Network is a network of 31 full-time and 11 part-time linked FM analog repeaters in the Amateur Radio Service that provide coverage across most of the state of Kansas and southeast Nebraska

Normally I would list all the repeaters that are owned but the club however, seeing how there is 31 of them plus some others that can be temporarily linked to the network, I am just going to give yall the link to their repeater page.

If you live in or are planning to be in Kansas, check out this repeater system. I really think it is a great idea to be able to talk in most of the state to anywhere else in the state. The only thing that could possible make it better was if you were able to stay on one frequency and talk anywhere.