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.

Special event in May 2020: 75 years of freedom

Follow the list of top chasers of this event & available awards here: TOP CHASERS

75 years ago the allied forces liberated The Netherlands from Nazi rule, ending the second world war five years after it started. The southern part of The Netherlands was liberated in the autumn of 1944, while the northern part was only liberated in the spring of 1945.

On May 4, 1945 the German forces formally capitulated to the British Field Marshall Montgomery. The capitulation was effective the next day.

We therefore celebrate the end of WW2 for the whole of the country on May 5 every year.

YNOMY DX Group & friends want to place attention on the valuable freedom we attained and have enjoyed ever since, with a radio-activity during the month of May.

We will activate 10 different special callsigns from May 1 to May 31: PA75FREE, PB75FREE, PC75FREE, PD75FREE, PE75FREE, PF75FREE, PG75FREE, PH75FREE, PA75FREEDOM and PD75FREEDOM.

OMs participating in this event: PA1WBU, PA2GB, PA3FYG, PA9CW, PB7Z, PD0RWL, PD7YY, PE4BAS, PG8M, PH0NO.

QSL
A special QSL card will be available for OMs who have contacted one or more of our stations. We will send out cards to all contacts via the bureau approximately two months after the activity. If you want to receive your card direct, please use ClubLog OQRS.

Award

For those interested - both OMs and SWLS - we offer an electronic award for free in three levels: bronze (15 points), silver (25 points) and gold (35 points). Each callsign will get you 3 points on the first contact and 1 extra point for every next contact on a different band or mode (modes being one of three categories: phone, cw or digi).

The top 15 chasers in each category (overall and outside EU) will receive a special gold award indicating their top position.

The award will be made available for download on this website.

Valid SWL applications will be accepted. Valid means that each QSO report contains the FREE call, chaser call, date (yyyymmdd), time, mode, band and RST report given by the FREE station. 
SWLs are advised that cluster spots do not constitute valid RX reports. Neither do we value SWL reports from websdr stations outside the SWLs DXCC. 

SWLS can send their SWL log (preferably XLS) to us on the email-address: 

Looking back at GJFF

Loads of antenna, coax and guy wires, batteries, charging gear, 4 radio's, an amp, 4 masts, mast supports, beams, tables, chairs and three guys managed to fit in one car (just) and undertake a day of driving + 1.5h of boating to get to GJ last Friday.

Au revoir douce France!

We went there with good memories of WWFF expeditions to LX and HB0 in the two preceding years. We were hoping to beat HB0 and reach LX levels in terms of QSOs (1700 in HB0, 2150 in LX) and include as many DX chasers in the fun as possible.
It was raining when we arrived and the forecast for the rest of the night was not good. We did however manage to put up the hexbeam in the first nature reserve for 1.5h. We were awarded a nice opening to NA.

PD7YY inside the car because of the weather Friday evening

Saturday - strong start, unhappy end

The next day the weather was brilliant. Sunshine and 14C. We were visited by Nigel GJ7LJJ and Keith G8IXN on our first activity. Keith showed up at our second spot as well by coincidence (small island). Both activities were busy with regular pileups. 40m was not very good but 20m made up for that easily thanks to Sporadic E conditions. As we had been using N1MM in different configurations we were not sure about our progress but we estimated we were past 1000 QSOs already by the end of the afternoon - a good sign.

Hexbeam in the wild on Saturday

We were looking forward to a nice long night activity from a high point on the NW corner of the island. When we had built up two stations and had just started making QSOs we were visited by local police that acted very unprofessionally cutting our activity short. Afterwards we learned this was "honorary police"... 

We lost at least 200 potential QSOs this way and a time window to work NA and SA chasers.

Sunday - making up lost time in great weather

Sunday started out with a little worry - how would the authorities react? Nigel was our support on FB messenger trying to reassure us that ham radio was not in fact outlawed on GJ. And he was right. After a call to the right person we were "free to go". Trying to catch up we revised our plan and went for four activities, revisiting the two parks that had had only marginal attention (both the evening sessions on Friday and Saturday). Skipping everything but a quick dinner we were on the air almost the whole day. Conditions on 20m were brilliant with a lot of Es. We even went up to 10 and 6 when Es allowed it. 40m was OK but just like on Saturday did not really fly. We ended our trip at the edge of the beach looking out over the sea.

We arrived at our final destination at sunset

Overall impressions

We greeted almost 1800 different radio amateurs on the air in 2700+ QSOs. In that enormous group we recognised a lot of familiar chasers but also a lot of new calls. We were happy to make a lot of DX contacts (65 DXCC in total). The skip to NA was especially good with 144 QSOs from 30 different states and 5 different VE provinces in the log. Odx was 11.5k km into CE.

Our experience with the honorary police of GJ was depressing but the reactions from the local radio community were very supportive (Nigel GJ7LJJ and the local RSGB representative he called upon).
We were blessed with great /P weather - sunshine and moderate temperatures and enjoyed beautiful nature reserves with ocean views in many cases. We stayed in a nice hotel that has a stunning view over the Atlantic.

View from our hotel