Youth Contesting Program

For a while now the YCP (Youth Contest Program) event has been organized by the Youngsters On The Air (YOTA) group, funded by IARU R1. It offers young hams under the age of 26 the opportunity to operate in a team during international contests from so called “Big Gun” stations around Europe. This includes the stations: ES5TV in Estonia, 4O3A in Montenegro, SK3W in Sweden or even 9A1A in Croatia. All levels of contest experience are accepted but a participant should have at least basic knowledge about contesting and using a transceiver. Also, the fun of contesting and the opportunity to learn new things about how to operate more efficiently in contests, are important points for the events success. This year three contests were announced on the webpage of YOTA to be in YCP 2017 (http://www.ham-yota.com/youth-contesting-program/).

So, on the 13^th and 14^th May seven Youngsters from all over Europe gathered at 9A1A station to take part in CQ-M International DX Contest. The Contest takes place on all classic shortwave bands from 160m to 10m in mixed modes, so CW and SSB. The special thing about this contest is that Multi-operator stations are allowed, but only one TX signal at any time is allowed on the air. Our Croatian hosts provided a really nice PTT interlock system at the station including software (DXLog) and hardware to assure we followed the rules.

Tomi, HA8RT, asked me at the beginning of the year if I was up for participating in a contest from somewhere abroad (and I couldn’t say NO!), so shortly after I signed up to the YCP on the YOTA website. Also Florian, OE3FTA, organizer of the YOTA Youth Camp 2016 in Wagrain, Austria, was immediately ready to join us without question. After an email giving us the all clear from our hosts in Croatia, the three of us planned our travel to Zagreb.

Tomi came by train from southern Hungary, whereas Florian came by car from Vienna. My journey was the shortest though, I checked in at Munich airport on late Friday evening and headed towards Zagreb by plane. At 22:30 local time Nikola, 9A5W, waited for me at the arrivals and afterwards we drove together about 20 minutes to the location at the heights of Kojaca. All the other participants of the Croatian Contest Club, Marina, 9A5CKM, Mihaela, 9A7MIM, Aron, 9A7ROR and Domagoj, 9A7CDZ from the local youngsters club 9A1RBZ, as well as Emil, 9A9A, Braco, 9A7R, Flo and Tomi already gathered there. After a warm welcome we had some dinner together. Afterwards, we felt really tired and went to our beds in the dormitory to gain some power for the upcoming contest.

On Sunday morning we had a rich breakfast and saw the impressive antennas in daylight.  Four towers with a height of approximately 50m astonished us. For usage in the contest we had switchable monoband yagi stacks from 10m to 40m and dipoles for 80m as well as 160m. In addition, no effort was spared, because for the low bands they provided us with beverage antennas.

After the network of the logging software and the six microkeyers, after reinstallation of their software, were fixed, we had a little team meeting in the shack and an introduction to the station.

Afterwards Tomi and I started on time at 1200 UTC with interlocked CQ on 20m and 15m CW. Meanwhile the available mults were hunted and shot on the other bands in CW and SSB. The interlock switching of hardware and software between all the stations prevented two stations transmitting at the same time. Especially in CW we managed to accumulate high QSO rates.

While we had many QSOs in the shack, the culinary well-being was not left out. Braco, 9A7R, our chef, always prepared some delicious food, from risotto to roast pork. This way we could always fill up our energy during our breaks, before we headed back towards the radio.

After about 2 hours of operating we changed from CW to SSB. Unfortunately, we had not had pileups, as expected from last year, in this mode. Shortly before dusk the nightshift began. We thought that 20m had died but fortunately we ran on that band until around 4am. High rates on 40m and 80m were mostly only doable in CW though. But we had also a lot of attention on the DXCC multipliers on every band. On Saturday morning our two female secret weapons opened up 15m and 20m SSB. Shortly after Tomi had to leave us. Emil, 9A9A, drove him to the train station in Zagreb.

But the contest was still ongoing. We had a big fight with our rivals on www.cqcontest.net, where we uploaded our score during the contest. Until 1159 UTC we fought for every QSO and for every mult and had a good reason to celebrate our result afterwards. After 2728 QSOs in 24 hours and a bit over 2 Million points we were claimed in front of UA4M and RT4F, and claimed number 1 in the world.
Many thanks for all your calls during the contest at this point!

After the contest we had a roundup and a cold ice-cream in the shack. Despite the great effort, the positive team spirit was emphasized, without which we would not have achieved this result.

Afterwards, we took some pictures of the awesome antenna forest outside. Flo left the group shortly thereafter, because he wanted to return home before the imminent storm. The Croatian Youngsters left the location shortly after Flo.

I used the time and wanted to do some activity as 9A/DK6SP on 20m. First I had a great pileup on CW with about 200 QSOs and afterwards a pileup in SSB with about 300 QSOs put into my logbook. But because of the upcoming thunderstorm we shut down the station and unplugged all the antennas from the transceiver.

A short time later, it became a blow to the dark, because a lightning bolt hit the substation in Zagreb. No more electricity around us. After a short dinner together with Nikola, 9A5W, and Emil, 9A9A, with flashlights, we could all make up for the missed sleep of the previous weekend.

When we had electricity at the station on Monday morning again, all transceivers and microkeyers were dismantled and loaded into the cars. Afterwards we left the station and Emil and I left for Zagreb.

There Marija, 9A6PAX, the daughter of Braco, 9A7R, was waiting for me to give me a tour of the city. From the foundation of Zagreb, the government buildings and the statue of Nikola Tesla to the new city, the history of the city was really well explained and shown to me. Mihaela, 9A7MIM, joined us after her lecture at the university and we sat down in a café next to the bureau of the Croatian Amateur Radio Society (HRS), where Marija works as a secretary. Local delicacies and beer ended the wonderful city tour.

Then Emil, 9A9A, picked Mihaela and me up by car to meet up with Nikola, 9A5W, again for dinner in a grill just outside the airport. We had really great local BBQ specialties there and ended the very successful and eventful weekend before I was taken back to the airport by Nikola. After about an hour and a half flight I came back exhausted, but with many new impressions, in Munich.

by Philipp, DK6SP

In 2016 we continued IARU R1’s Youth Contesting Program (YCP). Youth from Region 1 travelled to the station of ES5TV (ES9C) and took part in the ARI International DX contest while another group went to 9A1A to take part in the CQ-M International DX contest.
The youngsters have written down a summary of the amazing experience they had during both contests, you can read them below:

ES9C

Peter (SA2BLV) from Sweden, Teodora (LZ2CWW) from Bulgaria, Dagi from ET3AA club station in Ethiopia and Fiodor (IZ7YBG) from Italy travelled to compete together with ES youngsters (ES7GM, ES5HTA) and a few local old timers at the station of ES5TV. The goal of winning the world was supposedly met with plenty of margin despite horrible propagation and somewhat limited contesting experience. Everyone was able to try out contesting in 3 different modes and 3 different operating positions (RUN/S&P/MULT). Having all the stations interlocked to each other provided the ops with a great challenge of trying to synchronize with each other’s transmissions and avoiding getting killed by the mad RUN op who was blocked by 4 different stations all the time. Due to having another contester born into my family (ES5TV) Sunday morning I was not able to be present but everyone was having plenty of fun without it. Not to mention abundance of food prepared by Tonu, ES2DW on constant basis.
In total 1848 QSOs were made in Phone, CW and RTTY. Score: 3,086,350

9A1A

Once again, the Croatian DX Club 9A1A, had the pleasure of being the host of the IARU Region 1 Youth Contesting Programme. Young contesters came from Hungary to participate in the CQ-M International DX Contest together with our club youngsters.
The members of the contesting team were the Hungarian youngsters Tomi (HA9T) and Novice OP Gabor;  9A1A young team members Mihaela (9A7MIM), Domagoj (9A7CDZ), Eugen (9A5AEV), Marina (9A5CKM), and Luka (9A5CPL);  and experienced 9A1A team members Emil (9A9A), Braco (9A7R) and Nikola (9A5W).

The youngsters arrived on the contest location on Friday May 13th where they spent the late afternoon and evening talking about the SAC SSB event, YOTA 2015 and future YOTA activities.
On Saturday morning in accordance to the contest rules the team prepared a strategy. With goal of allowing the young part of the team to handle the majority of the contesting participation.

We used the 9A1A call throughout the event. Equipment set up was as it is for Multi-Multi but with use of Multi OP-single transmitter contest rules. Propagation conditions were nice. A big surprise was that the there were 10 meter band openings on both days. As Saturday and Sunday were very rainy days, even with heavy rain showers, beverage antennas helped a lot to receive signals on 160, 80 and 40 meters bands.

Within 24 hours, 2273 QSOs were logged of which  90% were logged by youngsters!
It was obvious that they really enjoyed huge pile-ups on all bands after band or mode exchange.
Main business for 9A9A, 9A7R and 9A5W was coordination of band and mode use of the running station and multipliers.
In the end we achieved a promising score and we expect to be have top results in MOST categories.

Braco, 9A7R, was our main chef and took care of preparing food in big quantity and excellent quality.

Event impressions are excellent. Bigger than after SAC contest. World wide and multi mode contest gave the youngsters more fun and dynamcs in making QSOs. All of them agreed that in future 9A1A should organize YCP in such type of the contest.
Event was closed Sunday afternoon with pan-cakes in Velika Gorica, a city 17 km away from the contesting location. This city is also the was arrival and departure location for Tomi, HA9T and Gabor.
It was another nice occasion to exchange contest impressions, speaking about the possibility of a new YCP event in the second half of 2016 and in case that we repeat YCP participation in CQM 2017 how to improve QSO rates like some Russian stations did this year.
The youngsters’ future plans in amateur radio were also discussed, where less experienced youngsters told us about their plans, specialy regarding knowledge of Morse code.