Processing all 75FREE QSLs

It took a while for the fourteen thousand 75FREE QSL cards to be printed but at the beginning of August the boxes arrived. As you can imagine they form a considerable weight together.

The printer we worked with was able to print the QSO details based on our log data - very convenient. This saves us the time we spent after previous operations when we used printed stickers. Applying a dozen stickers is not an issue but when you have to process thousands of cards it take a lot of time.

We have dropped off all the bureau cards at the Dutch QSL bureau and sent off most of the direct cards. The last few will be sent this week.

We hope you appreciate the card and look forward to working you from our next activity.

75 FREE event - top chasers and awards

The P*75FREE event has ended. It was fun to organise. COVID-19 limited us in team events but the activity level was high - much higher than 5 years ago. Sporadic E in late May helped to increase the fun.

We logged 25.000 QSOs with 13.000 different stations in 137 DXCC. This has resulted in more than 400 awards. OH2YV secured the first place early on and went for an almost theoretical maximum. However the final weekend was exciting with all the top chasers scoring 10 or more points to try to claim a higher spot. 

The following operators deserve a special mention for working all ten different FREE calls:  IK2TTJ, F5NEP and M0ILT.

Well done all! It was a pleasure seeing so many familiar calls on the various bands and modes.

Final awards have been generated and can be downloaded below - including the special awards for the TOP 15. We will now order QSL cards and send them out as soon as possible.

The P*75FREE team thanks all chasers for joining the event. Stay FREE!

Top chasers 

Final update (June 1):

Overall			Outside EU
Pos	Call	Pts	Pos	Call	Pts
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 9 11 12 13 13 15 15	OH2YV IK2TTJ 9A6W F5NEP EA1LT OM1AX 9A3KG IK2ULS YO6CFB IK6IHU R6AF DL1EJG OZ1BUR SP2PBY HB9OAU F6COW	117 104 98 97 74 69 68 59 57 57 55 50 48 48 46 46	1 2 3 3 5 6 7 8 9 10 10 12 12 14 14	4Z4DX PP7DX N4MM VE3XN W9OO RX9WN EA8WU K2VV KF2O W9RF UN7IT KB1EFS VE3AT 4Z5UY RY9C	43 31 28 28 27 26 25 21 20 18 18 16 16 15 15

Apart from the top 15 the following operators reached the gold level (in scoring order): IW2OGW, IK2UCL, OE6WIG, OM3CND, MI0GOZ, M0ILT, ON4CB, OM5KM, YO3JW, OM5CM, IK2YXH, EC1A, HA6VH, SP4NKU, DL5BK, F4VSD, SP8BJU, YU7NW, OK4RQ, M0BMX, EA3IM, SP3J, OH3GZ, E77O, F6HIA, HA5KY, SP2EWQ, OK1MTA, OK1DSN, IW2KIC, 9A1WW, OK2PDE, 2E0MNG and ON4LN.

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Awards

If you managed to reach an award level (bronze, silver, gold), you can download an award here by entering your base callsign (without "/"). Single awards will download as JPEG, multiple awards as ZIP.

To request an SWL award please check our SWL rules.

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Event data

The database contains more than 25.000 QSOs with 13.000 chasers from 137 DXCC.

75FREE - the event and the team

5 years ago we organised the first commemoration of the end of WW2 by setting up a short award program and bringing several special calls in the air. There were 9 calls that time in the range of P*45FREE.

It was such a success that we decided to repeat the event this year - celebrating 75 years of freedom in PA. We found 10 operators - most of them present in 2015 - who were enthusiastic about activating a special call for a month.

Our plans included a group activity from a WW2 museum but COVID-19 blocked that option.We did have a smaller group activity with three operators from a nature reserve.

We have had a lot of fun using the special calls for a whole month, meeting a few familiar and a lot of new operators - a few of which became regulars. We enjoyed all contacts but the regulars brought a smile of recognition along the way. The most ear-catching was Veikko, OH2YV who seemed to appear on every band in both CW and phone. He is set to win the challenge we set by a wide margin - which is even more remarkable if you consider that he does not use digi modes (and therefore has less mode slots to score).

We are looking forward to a nice finale tomorrow. Today was a good example with a lot of Es during the morning and early afternoon creating special skips on virtually all bands.

Presenting the P*75FREE team:

PA75FREE (Wilco, PA1WBU)	PB75FREE (Geert, PA2GB)

PC75FREE (Tonnie, PA9CW)	PD75FREE (Marcel, PD7YY)

PE75FREE (Bas, PE4BAS)	PF75FREE (Bernard, PB7Z)

PG75FREE (Marcel, PE5TT)	PH75FREE (Lars, PH0NO)

PA75FREEDOM (Hans, PA3FYG)	PD75FREEDOM (Toon, PD0RWL)

Operators have been active on all bands that gave any possibility of making contacts from 160m up to 70cm (depending on license rights) both from home and /P in the field.

In 2015 we logged 11.000 contacts with almost 6.500 different operators in 117 DXCC. One day before ending the 2020 event we have made double the amount of QSOs with 11.5k different operators in 134 DXCC.

Conditions weren't better than back then but we did make more use of the now far more popular digital modes like FT8. Below you will find the share of each band in our database.