2009 is the year of Scottish Homecoming and is celebrating Scotland's contributions to the world. Such as whisky, haggis, Haviestoun's Bitter & Twisted Ale, Billy Connolly, Munro bagging, golf, Sean Connery (shurly shome mishtake) There are many events on throughout the year all over Scotland.
OFCOM have been generous enough to allow Scottish amateur stations the chance to use a special prefix during the Homecoming celebrations. All Scottish stations can apply for an NoV which allows them to replace the 'M' secondary locator with the letter 'A' for Alba, the Gaelic name for Scotland. You can apply online for the NoV, mine was granted just now (23:05) and takes no time at all. The requirements being that your main station address is based in Scotland. The NoV expires at midnight November 30th.
Excellent, Andy, I look forward to working many Albannach stations with the special call!
Can I add in homage a few more contributions? Scottish winter climbing which has influenced snow and ice techniques around the globe, the Scottish gardens in the west where plants such as my favourite rhododendrons grow better than they do in their countries of origin, and that king of bottled beers, McEwen’s Champion, which at 7.3% vol must be treated with the greatest of respect…
the Scottish gardens in the west where plants such as my favourite
rhododendrons grow better than they do in their countries of origin
Yup. Many an hour has been spent relaxing in places like the gardens at Poolewe and Achamore on Gigha. There was something particularly magic about Gigha.
Anyway we could make lots of jokes about modern Scottish culture especially as nobody has yet mentioned The Krankies. However, the homecoming is meant to be taken a little more seriously given the amount of money being spent on it. And due to the way government is funded up here much thanks are due to our soft Southern shandy drinking friends for putting their hands so deep into their pockets to pay for so many of the celebrations!
If it wasn’t for the fact that I am seriously allergic to midges I would have moved to Scotland decades ago! Thanks for the website, Andy, for some odd reason I had not heard of this celebration.
73
Brian G8ADD
PS The most magical garden of all is Crarae, South of Inverarie, there is nothing anywhere to match it with its Himalaya-like gorge, although I am very fond of Arduaine, south of Oban.
Having thought about it a for a little while now, it does seem strange that the prefix is only available to stations with their main address in Scotland. Surely a homecoming event should be inclusive of those Scots currently domiciled elsewhere, thus allowing those from south of the border, or further afield, to visit and play with a GA/MA/2A prefix.
I have no Scottish ancestry, so it doesn’t apply to me anyway, although I am, apparently, helping to fund it
In reply to MM0FMF:
Both Christine - GM4YMM and myself have also got the Novation to use the GA prefix. Our next SOTA outing will hopefully be to Ailsa Craig GM/SS-246 in a couple days time and we might use the new prefix for that.
Will the SOTA database recognise the GA - prefix for activation and chasers, I wonder?
The DXCC desk at the ARRL have also been put on the case, I am told.
73 de Ken - currently running a mini pile-up on 40 m SSB as GA0AXY
You should be able to log in to the database under your GM0 call and in simply enter GA0AXY in the field for the callsign used on the activation. There again I haven;t tried it but I don’t see why it shouldn’t work.
Will the SOTA database recognise the GA - prefix for activation and
chasers, I wonder?
There are plenty of examples of activations using odd callsigns (e.g. club calls) so I don’t see that this will be any different. If the typos I’ve spotted while chasing up missing asterisks are anything to go by, it will take just about anything.
It is possible that SOTAwatch will fail to recognise the new prefix when looking up the activator name on spots and alerts, but that remains to be seen.
I managed to work GA4JR tonight during the 432MHz UK Activity contest
I believe that to be my first QSO with Scotland on that band from home IO83SS, although I have heard Scottish stations on 70cms before, I never managed to work them.
The new prefix did confuse the VHFCC online log system though, & listed GA as England!
In reply to MM0FMF:
This is great news. However, it could have been better. Homecoming is a year long celebrationg. i.e. most of 2009! This is an eleventh hour entry for Hams.We should have had it months ago.Enjoy.
Fred
2M0COT
There are many events on throughout the year all over Scotland.
