The 2018 CQ-WE Contest

ANOTHER CQ-WE Contest is under our belts: and from what I've heard it was a pretty good contest. The main complaint, as in previous years, is the lack of CW participants. Sure, the band conditions were awful -- this sunspot cycle has presented some of the most significant challenges in our lifetimes according to some -- but I was working 40 meters at a respectable clip on Sunday afternoon.

We received a total of 61 logs for this year's contest. Here are a list of those who submitted logs: W2DAR , W2CQH, WB2QOQ, W4FEB, W2JEK, W2FMB, N9XU, N3SXI, KJ4CNC, KB0BH, K2UI, K2HYD, K0OHB, AG7KO, AI4GR, AK2F, K0SFV, K2AL, K2YG, K3TW, K4PQC, K5IX, K5KVN, K5PBJ, K8RSP, KA1WPM, KB4LWT, KB8RY, KC2DWI, KC2WUF, KD2KW, KD8WK, KD8ZG, KE8CEO, KU2C, N2AAX, N2DR, N2FYE, N2MS, N4DE, N4HAI, N5KGN, N9AGW, N9CX, NK1N, W2DAD, W2EQ, W2IOC, W2IY, W2JLK, W2MN, W2PTP, W2VE, W3CRZ, W4BXI, W8KRS, W8REW, WA2UBK, WA5MLF, WB2UYN, WD8CZG. If you submitted a log and your call is not in the above list, please contact our National Coordinator, Tom Brown, W2EQ, so that we can get it straightened out. The final results should be posted here in the February timeframe.

We hope you enjoyed this year's contest and we look forward to making another contact with you again soon.

HAVE A QUESTION about CQ-WE? Email the National Coordinator. Interested in discussing the contest or just want to keep in touch? Feel free to join Ma-Bell-Hams, a Yahoo E-mail Group where such discussions are welcome: Just enter your email address in the space below and click "Join Now!".

CONTEST HOST: The role of Contest Host is an important one, and we appreciate the time and effort the various locations have put into designing and distributing their certificates in years past. We are therefore pleased to announce that brothers Ken and Al Hanzl, W2IOC and K2AL, with the help of their non-ham sister Joan, will produce the certs for the 2018 contest. The certs will highlight the Kearny location. Their father, the original holder of the W2IOC call, worked at Kearny for 42 years so the family has a rich history in the location. We look forward to seeing this year's certificate.

HELP US COMPILE a Historical Record of our Bell System Locations and Ham Clubs: A big part of the CQ-WE contest is communicating with as many different Location Codes as possible. The locations these codes represent made up the once great Bell System. Today, many — actually, most — of these locations, along with their location-sanctioned ham clubs, are either defunct or a shadow of their former selves.

The CQ-WE committee is undertaking a project to resurrect and preserve a history of the various Bell System locations before this information and heritage is permanently lost. But, its success depends on you! Please check our Location Histories page, and if you can provide some information on a missing location — or additional information on one that has already been published — consider authoring a short article describing your location. If it supported a corporate ham club, please include your remembrances of that, too. Use the existing write-ups as guides for style and format. Please send your material to the CQ-WE webmaster, cqwe-web-2016@cboh.org, and we'll put it up on the web site to highlight your location for posterity, and even give you credit in the byline. By taking a few minutes to document what you know from your personal experience with AT&T and its subsidiaries, we hope to preserve some of the rich history of the many facets of the once proud and great Bell System.