Since 1948
The Special Event Station W9I, celebrating the 2020 Illinois State Fair, is now history. For ten days, W9I was operated by nine SVRC club members operating on any band and using any mode they wished. In addition to the traditional SSB and CW modes, several different digital modes were employed as well.
Since the Covid pandemic had caused the State Fair to be cancelled, our operators worked W9I independently from the comfort of their own homes. We would have preferred to operate nearer to the corn dog stands, but… as they say, “You can’t stop amateur radio. We work when all else goes dark.”
W9I logged over 600 contacts from 45 of the 50 states, 6 continents, and the foreign countries of Argentina, Azores, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Ceuta & Melilla, Chile, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Germany, France, Greece, Hungary, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Puerto Rico, Spain, and Switzerland.
The logs are not quite complete, but we can share the following breakdowns:
BANDS: (5) 160m, (106) 80m, (281) 40m, (6) 30m, (143) 20m, (2) 17m, (7) 15M, and (25) 2m.
MODES: (286) SSB, (175) FT8, (61) CW, (39) FT4, (25) PSK31, (7) SSTV, (6) HELLSCHREIBER, (6) PSK63, (2) OLIVIA, (1) THOR, (1) PSK125, and (1) JT8.
As of noon, Tuesday, 8-25-2020, we have received and replied to 18 QSL cards. More will be arriving over the next few days. As we get them scanned and posted, they will join our ever-growing collection of QSL cards on the SVRC website. See them here at: http://svrc.org/qslimg/
Many thanks to all the operators of W9I. We hope you had some fun along the way!
BTW - click on any of the map images below to see just where our contacts were! They are broken down by band - with the first image being an aggregate of ALL contacts. Enjoy!
J. Mitch Hopper – K9ZXO
