Veterans Day 2014 – K6V

[Note: This article was submitted to both slvarc.org and k6bj.org to cover a wider audience.]

CQ CQ K6V from the Santa Cruz Veterans Memorial Building!

Veterans Day 2014 was a community event! And this year it celebrated the reopening of the Ham Shack in the Santa Cruz Veterans Memorial Building (on Front Street) on Nov 8^th, 9^th and 11^th. For the first time in three years, the HF Station was on the air!

It took an “all hands” effort in the last few days and weeks leading up to the event. Pig Pen (from Charlie Brown’s crew) would have been proud of the dust cloud generated by a group of Amateur’s bringing radios, antennas, and room furniture together and getting ready for the event.  As of Saturday morning, the HF station was back in ship shape and ready to make contacts around the world for the Veterans Day weekend. All hands were on deck staffing the special event station and signing Kilo Six Victor (K6V)!

Key highlights from the weekend included: Operating over 100 contacts (from Japan to Florida and Canada), contact with other Special Event Veteran Locations around the US, having a number of folks from both SCCARC and SLVARC stop by to say hello and operate, having San (W6RRR) work all of the CW contacts made, admiring Michael’s (AG6MK) young daughters—Ariel (KK6EYK) and Aster (not licensed yet)—really boosting our phone contacts when they were calling CQ, and everyone enjoying  a fantastic community and technical effort honoring our local Veterans by getting the Veterans Hall HF station back on the air.

Thanks goes to everyone who took time to support and honor those who served over Veterans Day Weekend. We salute you!

Apologies to those who helped, operated, or supported this event, but are not noted here. Without your support we wouldn’t have been able to say “CQ CQ Kilo 6 Victory, Veterans Day”!

Photos Courtesy of Fred KJ6OOV and Michael AG6MK