Saturday, July 21, 2012

ATS Sprint

There was a new QRP operating event taking place on the HF airwaves tonight - the ATS Sprint.  Meant mostly for operators of Steve KKD1JV's famous little trail radios, it was open to all QRPers, no matter the rig chosen to use.

I snagged six participants on 20 Meters including G4ISJ/P in England.  Band conditions weren't the best and I spent a goodly amount of time trying to track down Dale WC7S, who was a big promoter of the event.  I heard a few stations successfully work Dale; but I never heard him myself.

Most of the activity seemed to stay on 20 Meters. I switched over to 40 Meters and there was a lot of RTTY around 7.040 MHz, but no QRPers that I was able to hear.  I thought I heard Nick WA5BDU calling "CQ ATS" somewhere around 7.039 MHz. If that was Nick the QSB was bad and he was in and out.

I sure hope that the organizers feel that they had a decent enough turn out so that they will schedule this event again.  Even though I wasn't using a KD1JV rig to participate, it was a lot of fun. I hate seeing QRP Sprints go the way of the Dodo bird.  Some folks feel there are too many; but my philosophy is "The more, the merrier!".  These contests are usually very friendly and are never cut throat affairs.  I tend to think of them as on the air QRP community gatherings rather than out and out contests.(That may be because I never place highly!).  It's through these events that I've gotten to know and become friends with so many other QRPers over the years.

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP - When you care to send the very least!

2 comments:

  1. Hey Larry,

    Thanks for joining in, even without one of the ATS rigs! Glad you had a good time in spite of the less-than-outstanding condx! We are planning on a follow-up - we're taking feedback into account for some minor tweaks perhaps, as well as deciding how often we'd like to run this event, but we will be back!

    Stay tuned to http://http://ats-sprint.blogspot.com for details as they become available, as well as results from the inaugural ATS QSO Party.

    73 de Lee, AA4GA

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  2. Larry,
    Good to hear you in there.
    Thanks for the QSO

    Pete
    G4ISJ

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