On Sunday April 19th the CARC hosted the ARRL Rookie Roundup at the Cleveland Amateur Radio Clubhouse.  This event was held to encourage newly-licensed operators (“Rookies”) in North America (including territories and possessions) to operate on the HF bands and experience competitive Amateur Radio operating. Experienced operators (“Non-Rookies”) are strongly encouraged to participate and help new operators – either on the air or in person.  The objective was for Rookies exchange information with as many other stations as possible on the 80, 40, 20, 15, and 10 meter HF bands.

There was a good turnout for the event as newly licensed hams were mentored by more experienced hams in making contacts on the HF bands.  Band conditions were not especially good for the event but all had a good time operating and learning more about ham radio.

Click on the link below to download the April Emergency Services Net/Event Calendar.  We will have our normal ACS meeting the 3rd Thursday of April at 7:00 at the CBCEMA.  Also if anyone is interested in helping out with the Special Olympics at Red Bank High School on April 25 we will need about 10 to 12 operators.

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Cleveland Amateur Radio Club Has Record Breaking Contest Results

The Cleveland Amateur Radio Club is now officially a contesting club. Jesse Rogers, W4JUU, announced that the March 24^th meeting that the CARC is now officially recognized by the ARRL as a contesting club. This will make submitting logs easier and allow club members to operate from their home stations if desired.

This weekend kicked off the first official event for the CARC contesting group. We participated in the CQ World Wide Worked All Prefixes contest (CQWW WPX). The contest is a world-wide event where operators/groups try to make as many contacts as possible with bonus multipliers for each different country prefix worked.

Members gathered at the CARC clubhouse on Friday evening around 7:00 PM to get setup for the big event. Radios and logging computers were prepared and synchronized. The contest began at 8:00 PM EDT (0000z).

The previous year’s score of 6,466 was exceed within the first hour of operating. By the time everyone left the clubhouse Friday night, we had already doubled the total score from last year.

Operations resumed early Saturday morning. There was a total of 17 members that that attended the event allowing us to change out operators and loggers when fatigue set in from the rigorous radio activity.

Operators young and old showed up to make contacts around the world. Harrison McCarn, KM4HNG, is one of our newest hams and was introduced to contesting by his grandfather Reggie McCarn, WB9KYN. Others just enjoyed the thrill of finding a station in that exotic country they had never heard of. Stations were contacted from as close as the United States and as far away as Australia, Japan, and Russia.

Nearing the close of the contest the CARC contesting group had made 504 contacts from 77 different country prefixes for a total score of 347,601.  Come to the next meeting of the CARC on April 14th to find out the final results.

I want to thank everyone that came out for the event and made it such a huge success.

73,

Derek Wooley KD5UBL

CARC Vice –President