Hello everybody and welcome back to the Everything Ham Radio Podcast! In this episode we are going to continue with our HF series by talking about Special Event Stations.
What Is A Special Event Station?
A special event station is basically the amateur radio version of an anniversary party. A lot of times, this is something like the anniversary of forming your club, or a certain battle in a war or even the anniversary of a major disaster. At the time of this episode, there are 130 special event stations registered with the ARRL until the end of 2016.
Typically a special event will have a special call sign as well. You can apply for a special 1X1 call sign and be granted one for a short-term. These call signs are typically only good for about a month. Sometimes clubs will have a special vanity call sign for the event instead of a 1X1. On the short Wikipedia article for what a special event station was, they mentioned this:
The National World War One Museum,at the Liberty Memorial, in Kansas City, Missouri, for instance will be having a special event station over the next six years in observance of the centennial of the Great War, under the call sign WW1USA.
We recently had a special event station here where I live celebrating the 180 year of Texas Independance. I unfortunately wasn’t able to participate in it because of moving, but hopefully I will be able to in the future special events that we have planned.
I have participated in a couple special events, and have talked to a few as well. Unfortunately, every time I talk to a special event station, I am using someone else’s call sign so I never get the QSL cards. I think the one that I wish I would’ve been able to get the most happened to me about 16 years ago or so when the Olympics were in Australia. The local hams there had a special event station going and we happened to be at a club camp out on one of the weekends of the Olympics. We had a HF rig setup and somehow managed to talk from Texas to Australia on 10 meters. It was in the peak of the sunspot cycle and it’s was one of the hardest contacts I have ever made, but I got it!
If you would like to find out when a special event station is going on to try to make contact with them, check out the ARRL Special Event Station page.

More Than Safe Blog
My wife has started her very own blog describing our journey through the foster care system and things that happen to us and how we dealt with the situation. Some things may just be foster care related but some of the stuff can be used as just general parenting. If you are a parent or are interested in learning a little bit about the foster care system, please check out her blog at MoreThanSafe.com. If you like what you see, subscribe to her email list to get notifications on when she puts up something new.
Packtenna Giveaway
A couple of weeks ago, I reached out to George with Packtenna to talk to him about this episode. I was trying to see about getting a coupon code, or an affiliate link with them. He instead has agreed to donate one of their new PackTenna Mini’s(an $89 value) to one lucky listener of this podcast.
George came through for me and all of you and I got the PackTenna Mini in the mail on Wednesday! I got a surprise as well, not only did he send me one to give away to one lucky listener, but he sent me a second one for me as well! Thanks George! I will be putting it to good use in the near future. I will also be doing a write-up on it this weekend as to my initial impression on it and later on how it work.
Now the moment you have all been waiting for! The winner of the PackTenna Mini giveaway is…
KF5RHI – Richard Slusher!!!
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