EuCW Bulletin No 2024/01 1) Firstly, I apologize for a somewhat delayed first newsletter of the year. I was visiting China during the New Year and a week after, VPN is not easy to deal with in China, so that is the reason the letter is a bit delayed. However, I was active from two Chinese club stations: BA7MT and BD7NN. Very interesting ham meetings with Cary zhu BD7KBB and friends! 2) Your Chairman will during 2024 spend a lot of time in South East Asia (Mainly Indonesia), but it will not prevent me from participating actively in European CW activities. During the past six months, With the kind assistance of Len, SM6KNL, I managed to set up a remote station near Gothenburg in Sweden. Using an Elecraft K3, Expert 1.3 K-FA, a vertical delta loop for 10-80 meters and a horizontal loop for 160 meters, I already have managed to work a lot of CW from different locations (St Petersburg, Almaty, Moscow and Jakarta). Call signs being used are SM6LRR for normal contacts and SJ6R for contests. Besides remote operations from Sweden, I have also managed to get the call YB0LRR, which hopefully will be used for portable operations (IOTA, SOTA and POTA). May I also take this opportunity to wish you All a Happy, Prosperous and hopefully more Peaceful Year 2024! 3) The GQRP Club celebrates its 50th Anniversary in 2024, with a variety of events and initiatives. After the Club Winter Sports, which have seen dozens of reports of QRP activity on all the ham bands, the next major event will take place between 29th March and 1st April 2024, with the GQRP Easter Egg-xpeditions. This event is focused on /P, /M and /MM activity, whereby individuals or groups of members get out of their shacks for a few hours or an entire day to practice setting up an efficient /P QRP station, and hang on the bands with fellow ham operators. The majority of activity will be on CW, and most probably around the QRP Centres of Activity on each of the ham bands. A list of all the Egg-xpeditions will be published closer to the date on the GQRP Club Website https://www.gqrp.com. Certificates will be awarded to all the Egg-xpeditions, to the best Egg-xpedition team report, and to the best Egg-chaser. Thanks Enzo M0KTZ for the info! 4) SCAG (Scandinavian CW Activity Groups) made good marketing activities for CW at the Handen Flea Market (near Stockholm). Robert SM0TAE and Hakan SM5OCK were the main organizers for the presentation table at the fair. Key topics were: What is the best way to learn telegraphy? Which CW keys/tools are recommended for the beginner? A CW computer with a straight key was installed for the visitors. Different kinds of CW tools like bugs and paddles were shown. Focus on new recruitment for SCAG, with an impressive result of eight new members following the presentation. The Begali "spark" key was shown to the audience. This is the first prize for the winner of the 2024 Straight Key Day on New Years Day. Reference CW books and other presentation material were available. Thanks Hakan SM56OCK for the info! 5) Jo PG4I reports that NTC (Netherlands Telegraphy Club) during 2023 has grown even more, and that the membership number passed an impressive 250 members. The QSO party in December was themed around Saint Nicholas and the special event call PF6SINT was activated for the first time. Besides the regular QSO parties on the third day of each month, NTC will celebrate their third anniversary on January 31, 2024. Keep your CW ears open for PI4NTC, PF6NTC and PG6NTC during the twho hours anniversary party. The rules can be found at https://pi4ntc.nl/ntcap/ 6) Needless to say, we must always address our own Snakes and Ladders activity with the highest attention. The reason for this is obvious for most of us, but well worth repeating. The upper part of the CW segments are in extremely exposed borderland territory. If we CW-enthusiasts not even can populate those upper 9-10 kHz, be sure that some other users will gradually consider them usable for all kinds of other modes. Yes, we talk about FT4, FT8 and new inventions that very rapidly gain popularity on the bands. Please find the rules for S&L here: https://eucw.org/sl3.html Snakes and Ladders have reasonably many participants from Central, South and Western Europe, but we indeed miss participants from especially the Scandinavian and East European member organizations. I will make some additional efforts among my Scandinavian and East European friends, with the hope to get a nice stable base of members from those regions as well. 7) AGCW-DL: The permanent activities of AGCW have gone into new rounds: (1) Friendship activity [eucw.org/agcw/fsa.txt] (2) Bug and Cootie[ eucw.org/agcw/buc.txt] Both activities strive for compatibility with EuCW "Snakes and Ladders" game, both run over 6 months and both foster activity near the top end of the CW bands. FSA emphasizes longer contacts, and BuC promotes the use of Bug keys and/or Cooties. The QRS-Net on 3556 kHz on Tuesdays at 19h DL time has obtained a call sign for the net control station: DL0SLW. The DOK is 'CW' (special DOK). 8) On January 14th, MCWG (Macedonian CW Group) is celebrating its 30th Anniversary https://www.qrz.com/db/z30mcwg Due to the bureaucratic reasons MCWG are unfortunately not able to use the special callsign Z30MCWG this time. In the present time the focus of MCWG is not only on high speed telegraphy, but also to preserve CW mode as such. Thanks Vlado Z35M (Founder and Secretary of MCWG) for the information. 9) I once remind you that the quality and extent of this Newsletter highly depends on the interaction between myself and the ECMs. Several clubs are very active and deliver interesting information regularly. However, I expect EVERY member club in EuCW to commit to contribution and contact. I am reaching out to all ECMs and ask you to regularly contact me with proposals, ideas or coming activities from your clubs. My email sm6lrr@gmail.com is always open for you! Welcome! 73 de RM2D Mats - This year more QRV as SM6LRR, SJ6R and hopefully YB0LRR.