The RSGB has launched a new award scheme called “Friendship on the air”. It is part of their ongoing “Get on the air to care” initiative and is designed to encourage amateurs to extend their QSO beyond just an exchange of callsigns and signal reports. The RSGB call this “connecting with the other station”.
Part of the award scheme is concerned with individual stations, but there is also a club element as well. For a contact to count towards an individual’s score and to count towards a club’s score, the qso must include the exchange of a simple four letter code that represents the club. For Essex Ham members this code is “EHAM”.
Monthly awards are available for Individuals who score more than 25 points in any given calendar month. Monthly club awards are available on a regional and national basis to the clubs with the highest combined scores from their participating members. Annual awards will follow the same pattern, but individuals will normally need to collect 220 points in a year but only 180 will be needed in 2021 due to the scheme starting in April 2021.
How can you take part?
Essex Ham hopes to soon be able to start running our popular “field operating days” once more and we will be encouraging operators to participate in this award at these events. Until then we hope that Essex Ham members will start adding their scores to the Essex Ham club total by using the EHAM club code.
All bands can be used, but only voice and CW contacts are eligible. DMR, IRLP and EchoLink modes are explicitly included and repeater contacts are not excluded.
All logs must be submitted in the digital format used for contest entries as the scoring is being performed using the RSGB’s contest scoring facilities.
More information
More details are available on the RSGB’s web site at RSGB Friendship on the Air Award/
Full terms and conditions (including advice on log submission) can be found in Friendship on the Air Award Rules
Our thanks to Peter G0DZB for being the advocate for Essex Ham’s Friendship On The Air participation
