21, 22, 28, 29 October 2017
Main Operating Times 08 00 to 20 00 Local
Some stations may be on air at other times
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On the dates above the ACO (Air Cadet Organization) will be organising and running a military style national radio exercise named ‘Exercise Blue Ham’. To make this successful we would like to invite Amateur Radio Operators to take part with us and make this the biggest radio exercise that the organisation has been involved in.
The exercise will take place on the MOD 5MHz (60 Metre) Band and a significant part of the exercise will be on the section of the band that amateurs are authorised to use.
Various Cadet stations will be operating on each of the four days, mainly from 08:00 to 20:00, but could also be outside these times, and will be on on various frequencies within the band. Where possibly stations will advertise which frequencies they are listening on live on this web site as the exercise is in progress and amateurs are welcome to check this page and call in on the advertised frequencies. The web site will be going live at the start of the exercise and before that time it may be running test software where all data will be simulated.
Cadet stations will call ‘Alpha Charlie’ which is the equivalent of CQ, and amateur stations are welcome to reply. Exercise Callsigns will all be in the range MRE01 up to MRE98 although other MR, MF and MA prefixed callsigns may be taking part.
The information exchange to score the contact will be your Callsign, signal report and Location . We would prefer the location to be in 6 digit Maidenhead Square as it makes it easier to log and can be a location near you if you prefer to not give a precise one over the air. As Cadet stations change frequency contacting them again on a different frequency will score as an additional contact, as these frequency changes they will be reported on the exercise web site where possible.
The contacts will get plotted almost live on the exercise web server, so please give your grid as AA00AA if you prefer your location to not be shown.
We will issue Certificates for amateur stations that contact 25, 50 or 75 Cadet stations during our period of operation using your callsign contact details on QRZ.com. Contact with the same station on different days count as separate contacts. We will also issue to Squadrons and Wings a ‘Certificate of Operation’.
This exercise does not give amateur stations permission to operate outside of their normal licensing conditions.
The ACO looks forward to operating as many of you that we can during the period of the Exercise and it will give our young operators an ideal opportunity for them to utilise their radio operating training on HF equipment to a different audience.
EXERCISE BLUE HAM 17 REPORT
Around the UK cadet stations were set up and operated on the 5 MHz Band for the purpose of Radio Amateurs to make contact with them, a similar exercise was run in June 2016 with great success. Once again Special callsigns for this activity were allocated out to stations that would be operating before the start of the event and were only usable during the period of operation, this provided some interesting callsigns in everyone’s logbooks.
Units from RAF Air Cadets (RAFAC), Army Cadet Force (ACF) and Sea Cadet Corps (SCC) made contact with 273 different amateur callsigns with nearly 1300 calls being logged electronically during the period of operation. Some cadet station to cadet station contacts were also recorded in the logbook. Once a contact was logged into the system it showed up onto a map which could be accessed by going to http://alphacharlie.org.uk/blueham/showmap.php
The top scoring callsigns for contacts racked up are G4DYA – 56, G0TNF/P – 49 and OZ7MHZ – 44 well done. Any Amateur with 10 or more contacts contacts may claim a PDF Certificate. Email your callsign and contact details to claim a PDF Certificate to:
Feedback again has been good and thanks go to those who have sent in the detail. We will look at setting up another exercise later on in the year when conditions may be better, details will be announced nearer the date.
Thanks you for taking part and giving the operators plenty of ‘Air time’ which cements their radio training that they have received.
A big thank you to those that assisted with the Exercise.