Past Feature Stories (Newest to Oldest)


Jumanji Contest Station HK1NA - Jorge Prieto HK1R
August 2014
Since I started in HAM radio in the early 80´s the activity that interested me the most were the contests. Ham radio contesting in Colombia has taken a huge step forward in the last 4 years.

Many Colombian amateur radio enthusiasts, sometimes encouraged by some foreign ham operators, made timid appearances in various competitions and categories with the only intention to participate and not winning.

Some ham operators made individual efforts in stations that had many limitations because they were located in a big town with thousands of electric cables and noise and interference from all sorts of electric devices, which made them less competitive.    more
The G5W Contest Station - Don Beattie G3BJ
August 2014
My interest in contests goes back some forty years. With a modest station in a suburban location, I was able to win, or almost win, some of the RSGB contests of those days. But of course, things have changed. Over those forty years, beam antennas have become the “norm”, towers are much more easily obtained and big linears are commonplace. And so my contesting aspirations changed as well.

In the 1990’s, with a slightly less modest station in a semi-rural village location, I began to build a multi-single capability. We formed a contest club (at a time when only clubs could be allocated short contest calls) and acquired the rights to what would eventually settle down as G5W. In the 90’s, however, the year influenced the call – so I have operated as G6W, G7W etc etc. Eventually, our regulator took a progressive attitude towards contest calls, “froze” the number (we could choose which) and opened the short contest calls to everyone who had a genuine interest in serious contesting.    more
The YE2R Contest Team - Martinus Jap YB2LSR
August 2014
In the beginning in Indonesia (YB-land) there were not so many contesters who took part in International contests.

Hans, YB2DX and I had an idea to create a contest team. We went to see our former ORARI Central Jawa (call area 2) Chairman Tim Hadi Dhanuwidjaja YB2AA (now SK).

We told him about our plan and asked for his advice, he was very helpful and supportive of our plan and after we got his permission we gave our contest team the call YE2R.

Just a note, previously the call sign YE2R had been used by Rivai YE3AA (ex YB2MTA) for an expedition in 2002.    more
The 9K2HN Contest History - Hamad Alnusif 9K2HN
July 2014
My name is Hamad Alnusif, I am Chairman of the Kuwait Amateur Radio Society (KARS) and my ham radio callsign is 9K2HN. I got started with ham radio in 1992 when I had a very small station located in Kuwait City at the age of 16 years.

After a few years I became interested in contesting and I started the journey to build up my station year after year.

In 2010 I realized that I would not be able to have the station of my dreams in the city, so I started building a new contest station from scratch in the northern part of Kuwait.

At the moment our station can run as Multi/Multi with 6 stations running at the same time and there is a future plan to expand it further to have a Multiplier station added.    more
The SJ2W Contest Station - Mikael Larsmark SM2WMV
July 2014
My name is Mikael Larsmark, SM2WMV and I'm 31 years old. I got my ham radio license when I was 15 and have always been having a big interest in building things.

Many of you active contesters on the west coast has probably heard SJ2W on 20m time and time again while the band has been rather dead towards Europe. With a station located up in the north part of Europe we have the advantage of having west coast openings very late and at times during full nights on 20m, sometimes even 15 but rarely on 10m.

This is our chance of being competitive and with absence of aurora we can even sometimes be rather competitive in Europe. However, when that layer of auroral absorption is there, we have no chance at all regardless of how big stations we build.    more
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