Special Bulletin: ARRL Seeks West Coast FD Bulletin Stations

As I mentioned a few days ago, K6KPH, used to broadcast Field Day
messages for the West Coast is not available this year due to the
COVID-19 pandemic.

I got thinking about this, so I’ve been in contact with the staff at
ARRL HQ to see if it would be possible to find another station or
stations on the West Coast to broadcast the messages, at least on some
of the bands and some of the modes using our Division members with
larger HF ham stations and antennas. (I have also been in contact with
the ARRL Directors for both the ARRL Southwestern and Pacific
Divisions.)

Here is the response I got back from Joe Carcia, NJ1Q, who is the
station manager for W1AW:

“I would need a station or two that can handle simultaneous transmitting
on 80, 40, 20, 17, and possibly 15 meters, for CW and digital. The
frequencies would be the same ones W1AW uses for all its scheduled
transmissions: http://www.arrl.org/w1aw-operating-schedule

CW is sent at 18 WPM with an 18 WPM character speed. The digital
lineup would be Baudot, BPSK31, and MFSK16.

The transmissions (CW, digital) would follow (on the half hour)
W1AW’s.

For the digital transmissions, we use fldigi. I can provide the macro
to handle the three modes. The transmitting station would need to do
some initial configuring, however.

Even though the bulletin emanates from ARRL HQ, station identification
would be with the callsign of the transmitting station; they would not
be using W1AW.

I provide all the versions (CW, digital) of the bulletin.

Here is the 2019 K6KPH schedule (for reference):

Sorry for the lateness of this, but the ARRL itself just found out that
K6KPH would not be available last Sunday. If there are any stations in
our Divison that are interested in helping out here with any of the
modes for this event, please contact Joe directly at: jcarcia@arrl.org.

Thanks, and everybody have fun on FD! (We’ll be 2E signing WW7E,
operating from my covered patio.)

73;
Mike
W7VO

ARRL Northwestern Division
Director: Michael T Ritz, W7VO
w7vo@arrl.org