Annual 42nd Marine Corps Marathon

The Amateur Radio Emergency Service® (ARES) consists of licensed amateurs who have voluntarily registered their qualifications and equipment, with their local ARES leadership, for communications duty in the public service when disaster strikes.  For many of our W4OVH members, we register with the Prince William County ARES (PWCARES) organization and as all Ham radio Operators know, “When All Else Fails… Amateur Radio” is there! You need to be equipped with sustaining skills. What if when you get to a location, there is no food and the sleeping conditions are undesirable? Before you leave on your assignment, you need to make sure you have coping skills that enable you to be able to do your job operating under the conditions you are assigned to—from hardship conditions to making sure you’re able … Read more >>

Support to PWC ARES and Quantico Triathlon & 20K Run

Just a quick post to say thank you to all of the support participants from W4OVH that joined in with the Prince William County Amateur Radio Emergency Services (PWCARES) team to help support the Marine Corp Marathon (MCM) Organizations simultaneous Quantico Triathlon and Quantico 12K Run.  Although David Lane, KG4GIY was unable to be present for the event, he planned and developed the support effort and turned the final implementation over to Greg Gresham, KM4CCG and myself and we had the easy task of working with our outstanding support volunteer team to make it all happen. The Triathlon and 12K Run was a success with more than eleven hundred participants starting their respective events by either jumping into the Potomac for the 750 meter swim or starting off on a 12K … Read more >>

Additional Eclipse Operating Information

W4OVH, If you are interested in operating during the eclipse, there is a contest.   The rules are at http://hamsci.org/seqp-rules.  There are lots of bonus points available. The contest exchange is Call Sign, Signal Report, 6-Character Grid Square. If you do not know your 6-character gird square, you can look it up on QRZ by  looking up your call and then the details tab and finding ‘grid square.  You will have to log onto QRZ to get that info. If you live in the Manassas area,  my Grid square and that of Gil, KM4OZH, is FM18GR. and that should be close. There is a special logging option in N1MM logger for this contest.   They basically want cabrillo format.    If you keep a paper log,  I will help you get it into … Read more >>

Follow Up to 13 Colonies Event

This is a short follow up to the recent article posted by John Heartney, KG4NXT, regarding the working of the 4th of July Independence Day “The Original 13 Colonies Special Event. John was kind enough to provide us with a image of his earned certificate for the special event. A number of our Ole Virginia Ham club members worked the Original 13 Colonies special event and earned the respective certificates.  As Kevin Utzy, KX4KU responded, Got mine too plus two qsl cards.  Only difference between yours and mine is you have NRA endorsement, so we will go with yours!  🙂 The Ole Virginia Hams Amateur Radio Club is fortunate to have members that enjoy working or even hosting events like Terry, KC4DV (Eclipsepedition 2017), and sharing the information with the … Read more >>

W4OVH in the 13 Colonies Special Event

13 Colonies Special Event 1300 UTC on July 1 until 0400 UTC on July 7 OVH was well represented in the 13 Colonies special event.    I probably do not have a complete listing but wanted to recognize those who I know about.  The object of the  13 Colonies special event is to contact designated stations in each of the original 13 colonies.   Each State has it own special 1 by 1 call – Virginia was K2B. I believe the following stations had a “Clean sweep” : Al, KB4BHB,  Byron, AK4XR,  Terry,  KC4DV, and Gil, KM4OZH.   Other club members participating were John , KG4NXT,  David, KK4ZUU,  Kevin , KX4KU, and Wayne N7QLK.   Some of the members were actively sharing spots on the difficult to work stations. Our own David, KK4ZUU, was one … Read more >>