EuCW Bulletin No 2023/01
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1) A new CW year (2023) has begun. Happy New Year to you all! I personally spent quite a few days visiting my radio station 100 kms away in the remote Moscow Region countryside, both around Christmas as well as during the New Year. The main reason for going there was to remove all the snow that had been falling in December, but also to keep an eye on the FT8WW operation from Crozet. Unfortunately, I was not lucky to manage a CW contact with Thierry F6CUK still. Maybe I will be more lucky later this month. My next serious plan is to visit my radio cabin a week for the 3Y0J Bouvet expedition, planned to start at the end of January if all goes well with the landing on the challenging island. Apart from DX-ing I did some CW contest activity in the RAEM contest and then just a lot of casual ragchew contacts on the bands. Conditions were pretty decent, but also suffering a bit from increased geomagnetic activity. However, we need those solar activities to build up the SFI/Sunspot numbers for the years to come. I anticipate that we will have a very good CW year, and hopefully those who got a bit stuck on new modern communication modes, will now find a good reason to again activate CW and ensure that the CW segments are lively and to keep possible intruders away.
 
2) I asked for contributions to the newsletter from the member clubs. Indeed I got a few interesting notes, but I stress the importance that all clubs are sharing their planned activities with EuCW, as we all together is the group of clubs that ensure that CW is the prime mode of Ham Radio operation. I urge you to already now start preparing useful information for the next newsletter, otherwise we will have shorter and shorter such publications. nIf you also have news about more ad hoc activities before the next newsletter in April, please also use the opportunity to send emails to our common address eucw@lists.posteo.de with such information. I will remind you the second part of March for your contributions.

3) We ask all membership clubs to carefully follow the IARU band plans when choosing frequencies for your activities. This is especially important for contests organized by our member clubs. There was one occasion when we realized that center frequencies on a few bands were not very wisely chosen - namely outside the Contest-preferred IARU frequencies, and actually even inside the Snakes and Ladders / Top9 segments. As we as an umbrella organization for CW clubs want to lead by example, it is also of vital importance that our individual member clubs carefully pay attention to the IARU recommendations. Thank you in advance for checking your future contest activities and aligning them with the contest-preferred segments according to the IARU Band Plan. If necessary, change the suggested center frequencies or contest segments, so they will fully align with the IARU recommendations.

4) The Netherlands Telegraphy Club has a brand new website at https://pi4ntc.nl  It contains information on all the current activities and also includes details on membership and awards available to claim. This year alone NTC has welcomed 80 new members and the current membership totals 182. Anyone can join the club after making 2 CW QSOs with a club member. The most popular activity to date is the NTC QSO Party which is held every third Thursday of the month from 19:00-20:00 UTC. On average there are about 40 participants each month. This year NTC has also introduced the AGCW-NTC friendship QSO party. This activity takes place twice a year, in 2023 it is planned for April 18 and October 17. To date, fourteen W-NTC-M awards have been issued. QSOs with 25 members are needed to get this free award. NTC sends out an invitation to all CW operators to join them in their yearly anniversary QSO party on January 31 2023, to celebrate the second year of existence for the club.

5) SCAG Scandinavian CW Group is actively supporting the promotion of CW through different activities and sponsorships. The Scandinavian Open CW Activity (SQ SAX) https://www.socwa.se/ is one example, where SCAG sponsors the lottery https://www.socwa.se/lotteri-scag.php  SCAG also organize two Straight Key Days per year as well as sponsor other initiatives to promote CW with a generous contribution. More info available on the SCAG homepage: https://scag.se/

6) Having followed the CW pileups of many DX-peditions lately, it has become very clear that we as members of different CW clubs, must pay more attention to discussing ethics and operating practices when chasing DX in pileups. Even if I am sure that most CW operators are indeed patient and cooperative in pileups, there is always room for improvement. Please ensure that all members of your clubs are well-acquainted with the DX Code of Conduct https://dx-code.com/ This small reminder among our CW-friends may have a positive effect on the upcoming 3Y0J Bouvet expedition (starting end of January and continuing for three weeks). 

7) The FISTS Europe Ladder is a monthly activity with two, two-hour sessions on the 2nd and 4th Sunday in a month.  As with all FISTS Europe activities, it is a relaxed and sociable activity.https://fists.co.uk/activitiescalendar.html#fistsladder2023

8) HSC Activity Day takes place on the 15th each month:   https://hsc.lima-city.de/en/activityday.html

9) YL1ZX Contest Group reminds about the Latvian open mechanical key activity on Feb 10th https://yl3jd.fizioikskile.lv/mkey/

10) FOC QSO Party (open to all CW operators) will take place on March 25th (00-24 UTC) https://www.g4foc.org/qsoparty

11) A permanent reminder on our own Snakes and Ladders program:  https://eucw.org/sl3.html  and our Associate Club ICWF's excellent activity Top9 https://internationalcwcouncil.org/top9-activity/

12) Let us also gradually prepare to promote our own EuCW QRS Activity Week, April 24, 00:00 UTC through April 28, 23:59 UTC  https://www.eucw.org/euqrs.html  It is a good opportunity to also make advertisement in good time for this activity, in your own club publications/newsletters or on the homepages. Let us really focus on this activity and make some good PR on Facebook or other channels of information. If we can make our new CW-friends feel comfortable practising CW with low speeds, then we help the whole development of future CW usage growth!

13) Fabian, DJ5CW (ex DJ1YFK) has created an absolutely perfect CW Club RBN Spotter:  https://rbn.telegraphy.de/  This tool is the best invention since sliced bread. You may define any filter function and then also send that selection with Telnet to your log program, which then will show exactly just those spots you would like to see (any club or combination of clubs, any speeds, any bands, any continents). Please try it out, and you will hopefully find it as useful as the users of today. I am not an addict to clusters and RBN in general, but this one I like as we can select a lot of options with different CW clubs.

14) Although not being a CW club only, TDDXC (True Blue DX Club) has an interesting activity that is called 2023 DX Ultra-Marathon https://www.tbdxc.net/marathon  You may choose to work only CW as there is a separate CW category in that activity. The other allowed categories are SSB and Mixed (CW and SSB). No digital modes are promoted as the idea of TBDXC are modes humans to humans without machines.

73 de RM2D (SM6LRR) Mats
Chairman of EUCW