425 DX News #1505

7 March 2020 A.R.I. DX Bulletin
No 1505

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*** 4 2 5 D X N E W S ***
**** DX INFORMATION ****
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Edited by I1JQJ & IK1ADH
Direttore Responsabile I2VGW

3B8 - Once again Nigel, G3TXF will operate the RSGB Commonwealth (BERU)
Contest on 14-15 March as 3B8XF from Mauritius (AF-049). After the
contest, and up until 27 March, he will focus on 160 and 80 metres.
QSL via LoTW, or via Club Log's OQRS.
4W - The Lagunaria DX Group's DXpedition to Timor Leste [425DXN 1498]
will take place from 11 October to 8 November, including a Multi-
Multi entry in the CQ WW DX SSB Contest. Thirteen operators (DB6JG,
DJ5IW, DJ7EO, DJ9RR, DL1MGB, DL3DXX, DL5AXX, DL5CW, DL5LYM, DL6FBL,
DL8OH, SP5XVY and VK2IA) will be active on 160-6 metres CW, SSB and
digital modes with ten stations and a large deployment of antennas.
Callsign and QSL route TBA. Bookmark http://www.timor-leste-dx.de/
for updates.
9G - Alan, G3XAQ will be active again as 9Q5XA from Ghana for the
Commonwealth (BERU) Contest (14-15 March). Before and after the
Contest he will operate CW only. QSL direct to G3SWH, preferably
through his OQRS: http://www.g3swh.org.uk/decision.html. [TNX DX
World]
CE0Y - Mike, VE7ACN will be active as CE0Y/VE7ACN from Easter Island (SA-
001) on 19-30 March. He will operate mainly CW on 80-10 metres,
plus 160 metres if local conditions allow. QSL via Club Log's OQRS
(preferred), LoTW or via VE7ACN.
DL - A large team will be active on all bands and modes as DA0HEL from
Helgoland Island (EU-127) on 19-29 March. In addition, they will
also be QRV as DL0IH from nearby Helgoland Duene, where access is
possible only between 8 and 15 UTC. QSLs via DF6QC, direct or
bureau.
DL - Special callsign DM30RSV will be active from 24 March to 2 October
to commemorate the formation of the Radiosportverband e.V. (Radio
Sport Union), the first independent national amateur radio club in
the German Democratic Republic. The activity period of DM30RSV will
mirror the actual lifespan of the RSV thirty years ago. QSL via the
bureau, LoTW, eQSL, or direct to DK5ON; logsearch on Club Log. A
certificate will be availabe; see http://www.70darc.club/ for
information.
GI - GB0SPD, GB2SPD and GB4SPD are three special callsigns that will
celebrate St Patrick's Day from Northern Ireland. The St Patrick's
Day on the air event will run from 12 UTC on 16 March until 12 UTC
on 18 March. See http://stpatrickaward.webs.com/ for details.
I - IY0CG is a new station affiliated to the Coordinamento Stazioni
Marconiane Italiane, which gathers amateur radio stations operating
from historic Marconi sites located in Italy. Operated by ARI Ca-
stelli Romani, IY0CG will be QRV mainly during the International
Marconi Day (25 April) from Castel Gandolfo, where in 1933 Marconi
established the world's first commercial point-to-point terrestrial
microwave link between the Vatican City and the summer residence
of the Pope. QSL via IK0NOJ.
I - Team IP1A (https://www.ip1a.it/) will be active on 1-3 May from
Palmaria Island (IIA LI027, not IOTA). They will operate SSB, CW
and digital modes with two stations, and will participate in the
ARI International DX Contest. QSL via IU3EDK, direct or bureau.
Further operations from islands qualifying for IOTA Group EU-083
will be announced on the team's website. Complete information about
the Italian Islands Award can be found on http://ari.it/. [TNX
IU4HRJ]
JA - Taka, JA8COE will be active again as JA8COE/0 from Sado Island (AS-
206) on 19-23 March. He will operate mainly FT8 and CW. QSL via
Club Log's OQRS, or via JA8COE (direct or bureau).
LU - Celebrating International Women's Day, YL operators from the Radio
Club QRM Belgrano will be active as LU4AAO on 7-8 March. They will
operate SSB and FT8 on 80, 40 and 20 metres. QSL direct to LU4AAO;
more information on http://lu4aao.org/. [TNX LU5AG]
OE - OE25EU is a special callsign celebrating the 25th anniversary since
Austria acceded to the European Union. It will be used for the
first time on 7-8 March, and again on 2-3 May, 6-7 and 21-22 June,
and during the first full weekends of July-November. All QSOs will
be confirmed automatically via the bureau.
OZ - OZ80QUEEN is another Danish special callsign that will be active on
16 April to celebrate the 80th birthday of H.M. Queen Margrethe II.
QSL via Club Log's OQRS, or via OZ1ACB. Information about the award
certificates available for contacts made with this station as
well as with OZ80HM and OX80HM [425DXN 1501] can be found on
https://www.qrz.com/db/OZ80QUEEN.
PA - Celebrating 75 years of freedom since the end of World War II,
special Dutch callsigns PA75FREE, PB75FREE, PC75FREE, PD75FREE,
PE75FREE, PF75FREE, PG75FREE, PH75FREE, PA75FREEDOM and PD75FREEDOM
will be active on 1-31 May. All QSOs will be confirmed via the
bureau; please use Club Log's OQRS for direct requests. A
certificate will be available; see the YNOMY DX Group's website
(http://www.ynomy.nl/) for information.
PY - Special callsign ZW60DF will be active on 1-30 April to commemorate
the 60th anniversary of Brasilia. The city was founded on 21 April
1960, to serve as the new federal capital of Brazil and seat of
government of the Distrito Federal. QSL via LoTW, or via PT2GTI.
S5 - Members of Radio Club Cerkno (http://www.s50e.si) will be active as
S500E throughout 2020 to mark half a million QSOs made from the
S50E station. The log will be uploaded to LoTW and Club Log on a
regular basis, and all QSOs will be confirmed via the bureau early
next year. Direct cards should be requested via Club Log's OQRS
(preferred), or via S50O. A special S500E T-shirt will be awarded
to the stations scoring the highest number of QSOs (band/mode) from
each continent and Slovenia. [TNX S50U]
TT - The Italian DXpedition Team will be active from N'Djamena, Chad
[425DXN 1493] from 29 September to 12 October. Nine operators
(I1FQH, I1HJT, I2PJA, I2YSB, IK2CIO, IK2CKR, IK2DIA, IK2HKT and
IK2RZP) will be active as TT8RR (CW, SSB, RTTY) and TT8XX (FT8)
with four stations on all bands. QSL via I2YSB (direct only). See
http://www.i2ysb.com/idt/ for more information, including real-time
logsearch and OQRS for direct QSLs.
UA9 - The Artic Legends Expedition 2020 [425DXN 1499] is expected to be
active as RI0B from Rastorguyev Island (AS-068) starting indica-
tively between 15 and 20 March. Plans are to operate CW, SSB and
FT8 with three stations for four days. The whole trip depends on
weather, as the team is using snowmobiles. As of 6 March, they were
at Antipayuta waiting for weather conditions to improve. QSL via
Club Log's OQRS (search for RI0B/AS-068). Updates can be found on
http://legendsarctic.com/dnevnik_ekspedicii_ri0b_2.
V3 - Iain, G4SGX will be active again as V31GX from Belize during the
Commonwealth (BERU) Contest (14-15 March). Afterwards he will
concentrate on 160 metres. QSL via LoTW and M0OXO's OQRS. [TNX DX
World]
VK - The Shepparton and District Amateur Radio Club (VK3SOL) will be
active as VI3RA on 14-15 March. Look for activity on 40, 30, 20, 17
and 15 metres to take place from the Broadcast Australia site which
was used by Radio Australia's shortwave service until 2017. A
special QSL card will be sent out for all the QSOs made.
W - Originally part of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Maine was
granted statehood and admitted to the Union on 15 March 1820. The
Maine Bicentennial Special Event will run on 16-22 March, with
twelve 1x1 special callsigns representing Maine's original nine
counties (K1C, K1H, K1K, K1L, K1O, K1P, K1S, K1W and K1Y) and three
"special locations" (K1B, K1J and K1P). Look for activity on 80, 40
and 20 metres SSB and CW. See https://maine200specialevent.com/ for
complete information about the event.
ZC4 - Adrian, G0KOM will be active as ZC4MK from Melanda Beach, UK
Sovereign Base Area on Cyprus (AS-004) from 26 March to 1 April,
including participation in the CQ WW WPX SSB Contest. QSL via Club
Log's OQRS, LoTW, or via G0KOM.
ZF - Pete, K8PGJ will be active again as ZF2PG from the Cayman Islands
(NA-016) on 25-30 March, including an entry in the CQ WW WPX SSB
Contest. QSL via LoTW or direct to home call.

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*** 4 2 5 D X N E W S ***
**** GOOD TO KNOW ... ****
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Edited by I1JQJ & IK1ADH
Direttore Responsabile I2VGW

Access to the main functions of www.425dxn.org is provided by the 425DXN App
for Android. It is available on Google Play - free of charge, no ads. Enjoy!

425 DX NEWS MAGAZINE ---> The February 2020 issue is now available for down-
load at http://www.425dxn.org/index.php. [TNX IZ3EBA]

4U1UN ---> The 4U1UN re-activation project took over four years to complete.
James Sarte, K2QI and Adrian Ciuperca, KO8SCA are the key operators who
worked on the project, which is based on "a slick in-house remote concept":
the station is located at the 42nd floor of the UN Headquarters in New York
City, while the control head is located on the ground floor. They are the
recipients of the Yasme Excellence Award 2020, which Ria Jairam, N2RJ
(Director, ARRL Hudson Division) and Martti Laine, OH2BH (Director, Yasme
Foundation) will present to them at the UN Headquarters on 6 March. "This
ceremony will be topped with the first-ever FT8 QSO from 4U1UN - with its
inventor Joe Taylor, K1JT at the controls. First twenty-five QSOs will be
awarded by U.N special certificate signed by Joe". Following the ceremony
the group of K2QI, G6CBR, N2RJ, OH2BH, KO8SCA and VE7NY will activate 4U1UN
in the ARRL DX SSB Contest. QSL via HB9BOU and LoTW. [TNX OH2BH]

ARRL INTERNATIONAL DX CONTEST (SSB) ---> Object of the contest is for W/VE
amateurs to work as many stations in as many DXCC Entities as possible on
160, 80, 40, 20, 15, and 10 metre bands, while DX stations (also including
KH6, KL7, CY9 and CY0) work as many W/VE amateurs in as many of the 48
contiguous states and provinces as possible (complete rules can be found at
http://www.arrl.org/arrl-dx). This year's event will be held on 7-8 March
(00.00-23.59 UTC). Give a look at the Announced Operations listing
maintained by Bill, NG3K: https://www.ng3k.com/Misc/adxs2020.html - good
contest to you all!

CASS AWARDS ---> The Cass Awards honour the wisdom and spirit of Cass WA6AUD
(SK), and encourage DXpeditions to maximize the number of DXers worked with
a Plaque for the single-operator DXpedition that works the most unique call-
signs within 2 weeks or less, and a Plaque for the "unlimited" DXpedition
that works the most unique callsigns.
Janusz Wegrzyn, SP9FIH has won (for the third year in a row) the 2019
Single-Operator Cass Award, this time by working 7518 unique stations during
his one-man DXpedition to Palestine as E44WE.
The 5K0K team (Petr Bohacek OK1BOA, Petr Spacil OK1FCJ, Pavol Halek OK1CRM,
Pavel Novak OK1GK, Ruda Sedlak OK2ZA, Ludek Odehnal OK2ZC, Karel Odehnal
OK2ZI, David Beran OK6DJ and Rob Rey HK3CW) worked 20,744 unique stations
from San Andres Island, winning the 2019 Unlimited Cass Award and setting a
new record for this award category.
Presented annually, the Cass Awards are issued in March for DXpeditions
during the preceding year. See http://www.cassaward.com/ for complete
information.

HAMVENTION AWARDS ---> Dayton Hamvention has named his year's award winners
(see https://hamvention.org/event-details/awards/ for the complete announce-
ment). Yasuo "Zorro" Miyazawa (JH1AJT) is the recipient of the Amateur of
the Year Award, which honours a radio amateur who "has made a long-term com-
mitment to the advancement to amateur radio".
The Technical Achievement Award goes to Steve Franke (K9AN), Bill Somerville
(G4WJS) and Joe Taylor (K1JT) for their development of the WSJT-X digital
software suite, in particular the digital protocols FT8 and FT4. FT8 was
introduced in July 2017, soon accounting for a large fraction of all amateur
radio activity on the HF bands. FT4 is a closely related mode designed
especially for digital contesting.
The Special Achievement Award is "usually given to a amateur who spearheaded
a single significant project" and "made an outstanding contribution to the
advancement of the radio art and/or science". The 2020 award winner is
Jordan Sherer (KN4CRD) for developing JS8Call, an open source and free piece
of software, inspired by WSJT-X and FLdigi, that provides weak signal
keyboard-to-keyboard messaging to amateur operators.
Finally, the South Canadian Amateur Radio Society (SCARS), an ARRL Special
Services Club based in the Oklahoma area, is the Club of the Year.

VP8PJ ---> Battling blowing snow and heavy winds that repeatedly damaged
several of the verticals, on 5 March the VP8PJ team was approaching 70,000
QSOs in the log. They remained active on the bands throughout Thursday, and
went QRT at 1 UTC on 6 March. Plans are to depart Signy Island on 7 March,
and to attempt an upload of the log once aboard the "Braveheart". A
successful upload is highly dependent on the weather and the position of the
ship at that given time relative to the satellite.

QSL GALLERY ---> The large collection of QSL cards on Les Nouvelles DX's
website has been updated. Sixteen different galleries include 17,683 cards
for the ten Most Wanted DXCC Entities (2010-19), the 62 deleted DXCC
Entities, obsolete prefixes, stations from Maghreb from 1945 to 1962,
Allied Forces stations in Germany (1945-70), special stations commemorating
ITU and IARU, stations using the United Nations prefix (4U), Antarctic bases
and TAAF (Terres Australes and Antarctiques Francaises), the various French
DXCC island Entities in the Pacific Ocean, the Indian Ocean and the Americas
(from 1945 to 1969), pre-1945 countries, French Departments and CONUS, plus
a gallery for cards not accepted by DXCC. Your participation is encouraged:
http://www.lesnouvellesdx.fr/galerieqsl.php. [TNX F6AJA].

+ SILENT KEY + Edward W. De Young, KS4AA passed away on 25 February. Born in
1941 and first licenced in 1955 as KN5COU in Texas, over the years he held
several callsigns across the US (K5COU, K6CAA, AE7AE, AE7AA) and Hawaii
(KH6GLU and NH7AA). Eddie migrated to Australia (1974-2011) and was QRV as
VK4LX, VK8XX, VK2KS, VK4EET and finally VK4AN. His first DX call was KX6BK
(Kwajalein, Marshall Islands 1963) and his first DXpedition was to Fanning
Island, Line Islands (nowadays East Kiribati) in 1968 as VR3DY. Other DX
activities included FW8DY (Wallis Island 1969), 5W1AF (1970), VS5AA (Brunei
1972), C21XX (1987), VI0ANT (Davis Station, Antarctica 1994-95), VI9NI
(2006), 3D2EE (2007), 3D2A (2008, 2010 and 2011) and T2T & T2V (2011). He
was also one of the operators of 3D2XX, the first DXpedition to Rotuma
(1988) A past National Awards Manager for the Wireless Institute of
Australia, he recently stepped down as editor of CQ Amateur Radio's "Awards"
column.

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QSLs received direct or through managers: 3B9FR, 4S7AB, 5H3UA (AF-032),
5T5PA, 9V1XX, A71EM, CE1LTL, CE8EIO, CO8RD, DU6/PE1NSQ, EF8R, EI7M, ES5RR,
ET3AA, FG8NY, FK/DB1RUL (OC-033), FK8CP, FY5KE, HL5IVL, HR9/N3AD (NA-057),
HV0A, J68GD, JT5DX, KD7WPJ/6 (NA-066), LY2019XMAS, NP4TX, OH0W, OJ0O,
OL72PLZ, PJ7PL, PY0F, RW0A, SU8WRC, T6AA, UN9L, V31VP, V51MA, V51WH, V85TL,
VP6R, XV1X, XZ2D, YW5F (SA-058), ZA1E, ZD7FT, ZL6YOTA, ZP5DA, ZW6C (SA-080).

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425 DX News is a free of charge weekly bulletin
edited by Mauro Pregliasco, I1JQJ and Valeria Pregliasco, IK1ADH

Its contents may be used, reproduced and distributed
in part or full provided that
"425 DX News" or "425DXN" receive proper credit

Contributors are invited to send their DX information to
Mauro Pregliasco, I1JQJ (i1jqj.mauro@gmail.com)
The deadline is 12 UTC on Fridays

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Direttore Responsabile
Gabriele Villa, I2VGW
Giornalista Professionista - Tessera n. 071675
Ordine Nazionale dei Giornalisti
Roma, Italia