Award: 5 Ocean Immortal Aviation Regiment 75

For the last week, I have been working the RP75* stations on CW on the HF bands from 17m to 80m for the various awards on offer to mark the 75th anniversary of the end of World War 2. While I was checking the numbers that I needed, I noticed that there was an associated aviation award for several of the stations worked.

The award issued by the Fifth Ocean Club is for the 'Immortal Aviation Regiment 75'.

The Fifth Ocean Club have an extensive list of free amateur radio awards and their website is here.. https://aviaham.hamlog.ru/diplom/

Although the website is in Russian, Google Translate does a pretty good job of changing the text into English.

Russian 'Victory-75' Award... May 2020

There are a large number of Russian RP75* stations active on the HF bands at present to mark the 75th Anniversary of the end of the Second World War.

I worked RP75AO on CW on 3-bands so far. More info below...

To commemorate 75th anniversary of the Victory in WW II, the Union of Russian Radio Amateurs (SRR), is conducting "Victory-75" special on-the-air event in May 2020. Special memorial stations with number "75" in their callsigns will be active.

Dates May 2 (starts at 00.00 UTC) - May 9 (ends at 11.59 UTC)

The award website is https://pobeda.srr.ru/

Although the website is in Russian, they have a PDF there with the rules in English.

Victory-75 Award - 75 pts (38 contacts required)

Hero Cities Award - 7 cities required

Peaceful Skies Award - 150 pts (75 contacts) required

Cities of Military Glory - 12 cities required

Spanish IARU 95 Award - April 2020

The International Amateur Radio Union (IARU) marks its 95th anniversary in 2020 and the national society for Spain (URE) have a special award scheme to celebrate the event.

Contacts can be made using any mode or band from 160 meters to 6 meters with the 10 different AMxWARD special stations. The special station callsigns are: AM95WARD - AM1WARD - AM2WARD - AM3WARD - AM4WARD AM5WARD - AM6WARD - AM7WARD - AM8WARD - AM9WARD

The award scheme runs from the 15th April 2020 at 0000z to 30th April 2020 (2359z). There are diplomas in PDF format awarded as follows (For European stations)...

SILVER DIPLOMA - Work 5 AM*WARD stations

GOLD DIPLOMA - Work 7 AM*WARD stations on at least 3 different bands (i.e. work 7 stations on 3 bands)

PLATINUM DIPLOMA - Work 10 AM*WARD stations on at least 3 different bands (i.e. work all 10 stations on 3 bands. This was later reduced to 9 as it was felt 10 was too hard.)

The award website is... https://iaru95.ure.es/

The Spanish National Society (URE) run award schemes like this every year or so and their award websites are excellent. As award schemes go, they really set the Gold standard.

Update 2nd May 2020... The award activation came to an end on the 30th of April and I managed 75 contacts on CW.

I worked 9 of the 10 stations on the 8 bands from 10m to 80m and I worked all 10 stations on 3 bands for the Platinum award (shown below).

The problem one of course was AM9WARD in Ceuta and Melilla on the north coast of Africa. They were always in demand with big pile ups and with the activity spread out over SSB and FT8 as well, they were always going to be a problem.

I missed the first 3 days of the award activation but I doubt if I would have worked much more from the start.

Awards below...

Spanish URE 70th Anniversary Award - April 1 to June 9, 2019

On April 1st 2019, the national society for radio amateurs in Spain (URE - Unión de Radioaficionados Españoles) celebrated its 70th anniversary. To commemorate this event, the URE,  is promoting an award scheme with 14 special event stations on the air from April 1 to June 9, 2019  using the special AM70 prefix.

I had read about this award scheme some weeks back but I didn't give it much attention. Then Jim, EI8GS was telling me about it on the local VHF net last Tuesday evening and how he was working them on SSB and FT8. After that. I could feel I was on a slippery slope :o)

I've been working the stations on CW on 80m, 40m, 30m and 20m over the last few days and the Gold award is shown above. It has been fun working them on the lower bands and checking through my logbook, I noticed that I haven't really used the bands below 28 MHz since April 2017 except for the occasional Irish contest.

It has also been interesting to see how the propagation path between Ireland and Spain (1000-1500kms) gets very difficult above 14 MHz. The Sporadic-E season should help out with the higher bands over the next few weeks.

The award website is https://70aniversario.ure.es/

Update :  1st June 2019
Finally managed to work AM70D on cw on 21 MHz for a clean sweep from 10m to 80m.

Update : 25th April 2019
Platinum award below...

Award Cert for the Wild Atlantic Way Award

On Friday the 17th of February 2017, I worked EI11WAW on 80m cw and this was the last one that I needed for the Wild Atlantic Way Award.

According to the awards manager Dave EI6AL, over 70 certificates have been issued at this stage and this was the first one to an EI station.

It's also the first one that has been endorsed for all contacts on CW as this wasn't available up to now. The other endorsements available from now on will be for SSB and Digital.

These are the bands that I used to contact the 9 WAW stations...

EI11WAW...CW...80m
EI22WAW...CW...20m
EI33WAW...CW...80m
EI44WAW...CW...80m
EI55WAW...CW...20m & 40m
EI66WAW...CW...80m
EI77WAW...CW...17m, 20m, 40m & 80m
EI88WAW...CW...20m
EI99WAW...CW...20m, 30m & 80m

What has been interesting about looking for these stations on the HF bands over the last 7 weeks is that I actually learnt something about propagation.

1) I had assumed that I could work EI stations on 80m at almost any time. That wasn't the case. With a low solar flux and the daytime critical frequency only getting up as high as 5.5 MHz, the MUF at night dropped pretty low. This had the effect of creating a skip zone on 80m so that I couldn't work other EI stations that were too close.

2) I had assumed that working other EI stations on 20m or 17m would be very difficult. I'm not sure if it was weak Sporadic-E or F2 backscatter but I could often hear the WAW stations on 14MHz and 18 MHz. The signals were pretty weak....down at a kind of level where a contact was possible on CW but not on SSB.

Overall, it looks like it is a very successful awards scheme and is certainly getting a lot of interest. If 70+ stations have already applied for the award after just 7 weeks, then surely that figure will be in the hundreds by the time the award scheme finishes at the end of 2017.

More info about the Wild Atlantic Way Award in this previous post.

Activity levels on CW for the EI Wild Atlantic Way stations

Just out of curiosity, I had a look at the number of CW spots on the DX cluster for the various Wild Atlantic Way stations... EI11WAW to EI99WAW. It's probably fair to say that the more active a station is on cw then the more cw spots should appear on the DX-Cluster.

This was the standings on the 16th of February 2017 and it shows all the cw spots since the start of the year. As you can see above, EI77WAW has the most spots and this call has been very active on cw on the bands from 80m to 17m.

What's also obvious are the rare ones....EI11WAW and EI88WAW....with just 17 and 18 spots respectively.

EI55WAW in the log

From 1st January to 31st December 2017 Irish Radio Amateurs will be on air with nine special calls – EI11WAW through to EI99WAW.  Each call will be associated with one of the counties making up the Wild Atlantic Way.  Each call will have its own distinctive QSL card depicting a highlight of the county linked to the call.

Following hot on the heels of EI66WAW and EI88WAW on Friday, I worked EI55WAW on 20m cw on Saturday the 4th of February 2017. Like the other times that I have worked WAW stations on 20m, the signals were weak but I was lucky enough to just get in early before the pile up started.

EI55WAW was number eight of nine on cw so that just leaves EI11WAW (Donegal) to go. There hasn't been much activity with that call so far on cw so the most difficult one will probably be the last. Still, I have just under 11 months left to find them though! :o)

More info about the Wild Atlantic Way award in this previous post.

EI66WAW and EI88WAW in the log

From 1st January to 31st December 2017 Irish Radio Amateurs will be on air with nine special calls – EI11WAW through to EI99WAW.  Each call will be associated with one of the counties making up the Wild Atlantic Way.  Each call will have its own distinctive QSL card depicting a highlight of the county linked to the call.

On Friday the 3rd of February 2017, I worked two more of them in the space of an hour.

First up was EI88WAW on 20m cw. He was busy working a pile up of stations and operating split. The signal with me was pretty weak so there was no hope of getting through a large European pile up. After he returned from a break, he was operating simplex and I managed to get in for a quick contact. WAW #6 on cw.

Within the hour, I found EI66WAW on 80m cw.

One thing that has suprised me is just how difficult it is to work some of the counties on cw. I have seen EI66WAW spotted loads of times but on 20m, 30m & 40m, he was way too weak. On 80m in the late evening, the skip has lengthened and Co.Clare is in the skip zone.

This time around, EI66WAW was on about an hour before sunset so he was very easy to work.

Just two more to go now on cw....EI11WAW and EI55WAW. The cluster doesn't show that many cw spots for them so it might take a while.

More info about the Wild Atlantic Way award in this previous post.

EI22WAW in the log

From 1st January to 31st December 2017 Irish Radio Amateurs will be on air with nine special calls – EI11WAW through to EI99WAW.  Each call will be associated with one of the counties making up the Wild Atlantic Way.  Each call will have its own distinctive QSL card depicting a highlight of the county linked to the call.

Today, I caught up with my fifth one...EI22WAW on 20m CW. There was a bit of a comedy of errors with this one. I was adjusting the morse key beforehand to try and get a smaller gap and sure enough, it jammed just before I gave a signal report! After some frantic adjusting, it got the report across ok.

The signals was quite weak but strong enough to make a contact when the European stations weren't calling.

Four more to go.

More info about the Wild Atlantic Way award in this previous post.

EI33WAW in the log

From 1st January to 31st December 2017 Irish Radio Amateurs will be on air with nine special calls – EI11WAW through to EI99WAW.  Each call will be associated with one of the counties making up the Wild Atlantic Way.  Each call will have its own distinctive QSL card depicting a highlight of the county linked to the call.

Today, I caught up with my fourth one on 80m CW...EI33WAW. Five more to go.

More info about the Wild Atlantic Way award in this previous post.

EI77WAW in the log

From 1st January to 31st December 2017 Irish Radio Amateurs will be on air with nine special calls – EI11WAW through to EI99WAW.  Each call will be associated with one of the counties making up the Wild Atlantic Way.  Each call will have its own distinctive QSL card depicting a highlight of the county linked to the call.

Today, I caught up with my third one on 80m CW...EI77WAW. Six more to go.

More info about the Wild Atlantic Way award in this previous post.

EI44WAW in the log

From 1st January to 31st December 2017 Irish Radio Amateurs will be on air with nine special calls – EI11WAW through to EI99WAW.  Each call will be associated with one of the counties making up the Wild Atlantic Way.  Each call will have its own distinctive QSL card depicting a highlight of the county linked to the call.

Today, I caught up with my second one on 80m CW...EI44WAW in County Mayo. Seven more to go.

More info about the Wild Atlantic Way award in this previous post.

2017 Wild Atlantic Way Award

From 1st January to 31st December 2017 Irish Radio Amateurs will be on air with nine special calls – EI11WAW through to EI99WAW.  Each call will be associated with one of the counties making up the Wild Atlantic Way.  Each call will have its own distinctive QSL card depicting a highlight of the county linked to the call.

QSL requests via Clublog or the Buro.  Requests for a Direct QSL via Clublog or to EI6AL enclosing $2, or €2 via paypal to payments@irts.ie

A Certificate will be made available for download to any station that works all nine calls,  any band any mode.  Apply by email to QSL manager EI6AL giving name and call.  A certificate can also be sent by post – send €5 ($5) to cover postage either through Clublog, direct to EI6AL or via paypal to payments@irts.ie

.My first QSO for 2017 in the log :o) ......Dave EI4BZ operating as EI99WAW on 80m CW at 00:10 UTC. Eight to go.