ARRL June VHF QSO Party is June 9-10
Thursday, May 31st, 2012 7:45am Thur —
Want everyone to know — and want everyone to spread the word — about the VHF/UHF contest season getting underway.
The season always starts off with the ARRL June VHF QSO Party. This contest runs 33 hours; operate as much as you care to. In the central time zone, it starts at 1pm Sat. and runs until 10pm Sun. The GMT times are from 1800Z June 9th until 0300Z June 11th.
Here’s the ARRL rules link: http://www.arrl.org/june-vhf-qso-party
EDIT — 2pm Thur. — Here’s another link to some helpful hints that I just found in my email:
http://www.arrl.org/news/have-some-fun-in-the-2012-arrl-june-vhf-qso-party
Hope you make plans to get on and enjoy the activity. The June contest has soared in popularity, primarily due to more and more ops (even HF’ers) getting on 6m and taking advantage of the DX potential. Most June contests will have several stretches of sporadic E skip, where signals are coming in on 6m from all across the USA, Canada, possibly the Caribbean and if we get really lucky, maybe even Europe or JA-land. (In fact, around midday today, European entities like YU, HA, SV, UR and ER were making it into the Midwest on 6m)
If you are fairly new to 6m operating, here’s a website that will help: www.smirk.org. In particular, these operating aids are must-read material — http://www.smirk.org/opaids.html
6 meters has long been known as The Gentleman’s Band and reading thru those opaids will help you continue that tradition into the future.