[CQ-Contest] ARRL Looking for West Coast FD Bulletin stations

[Michael Ritz]

As you may or not be aware, the station,(K6KPH), used to broadcast the Field Day messages for the West Coast is not available this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Here is from the ARRL Field Day Bulletin from a couple of days ago: 

 "...because of the National Park Service national park
shutdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic, K6KPH, the Maritime Radio
Historical Society amateur station in California, will not transmit
any Field Day bulleting transmissions for west coast listeners over
the June 27 and 28 weekend.   MHRS Transmitter Supervisor Steve
Hawes, WB6UZX, said personnel will not be allowed to enter park
facilities at least until July 1."

I got thinking about this, so I've been in contact with the people at ARRL HQ to see if it would be possible to find another station on the West Coast to broadcast the messages, at least on some of the bands and some of the modes using one or two of our area superstations. 

Here is the response I got back from Joe Carcia, NJ1Q, who is the manager for W1AW:   

"I would need a station or two that can handle simultaneous transmitting on 80, 40, 20, 17, and possibly 15 meters, for CW and digital.  The frequencies would be the same ones W1AW uses for all its scheduled transmissions: http://www.arrl.org/w1aw-operating-schedule

CW is sent at 18 WPM with an 18 WPM character speed.  The digital lineup would be Baudot, BPSK31, and MFSK16.

The transmissions (CW, digital) would follow (on the half hour) W1AW’s.

For the digital transmissions, we use fldigi.  I can provide the macro to handle the three modes.  The transmitting station would need to do some initial configuring, however. 

Even though the bulletin emanates from ARRL HQ, station identification would be with the callsign of the transmitting station; they would not be using W1AW.

I provide all the versions (CW, digital) of the bulletin. 

Here is the 2019 K6KPH schedule (for reference):

http://www.arrl.org/news/view/w1aw-announces-arrl-field-day-bulletin-schedule"

Sorry for the lateness of this, but the ARRL just found out that K6KPH would not be available last Sunday, and I found out when the ARRL Bulletin came out on Monday. If there are any stations that are interested in helping out here with any of the modes for this event, please contact Joe directly at jcarcia at arrl.org. 

Thanks, and everybody have fun on FD! 


73;
Mike
W7VO
Director, ARRL NW Division (and contester too!)