Details

17 January 2017

The “Field Flowers” QRP Marathon in 2016 was attended by 58 hams from 7 countries (ES, EW, JA, LZ, UA, UR, Z3). Moreover, the number of participants was growing from month to month. Of a total of 39 stations continuously participated in the Marathon and its activities.

The Seasonal activity days were carried out four times during the year, each of them was attended outdoors by 17 to 28 QPR fans.

Marathon participants came outdoors more than 700 times, almost 500 of them — to new for themselves places. In total 8714 QSOs with all six continents has been held in the Marathon, 4442 QSO by CW, 3772 QSO by Phone modes and 500 QSO in digital modes. 488 QSO was established through SAT-repeaters.

Vlado Z35M confidently won in the overall classification, gaining 4255 points. Andrei UA6BFE (3543 points) is at second place, Sergey EW8OO (1062 points) — at third place.

The intense competition for first place went on up to the end of Marathon, it was not clear who will be the winner up to the latest reports.

Not less interesting fight was the in the groups, resulting places was distributed the same way in “Portable” group (/P) — I place Z35M, II place UA6BFE, III place EW8OO.

First place in the “Mobile” (/M) group has again took up Vlado Z35M, but the second place was taken already by Sergey UR8QE, and the third one — Pavel RA7RA.

In the “Pedestrian Mobile” (/PM) group Victor RU3NJC won a landslide victory. Vlado Z35M came to second place and Igor RV9WIW came to the third one.

In terms of continents Vlado Z35M became the winner in the “Portable” (/P) group in Europe, Andrei UA6BFE is on the second place and Sergey EW8OO — on the third one.
Vladimir RK8A has won first place in Asia, Igor RV9WIW — second place, the third place was taken by Ruslan R0SAX.

“Mobile” (/M) and “Pedestrian Mobile” (/PM) groups in Asia did not have enough 5 participants, so the winners were not determined there.

Winners in Europe are:
— «Mobile» (/M): Z35M, UR8QE, RA7RA;
— «Pedestrian Mobile» (/PM): RU3NJC, Z35M, R2DGZ.

Ham radio operators from the Americas, Africa and Oceania did not participate in the Marathon.

The absolute winner and those who took the first place in the world in the /P, /M and /PM groups will be awarded with trophies. The winners in each of the groups on continents will get plaques. Certificates of Winner will be sent to radio amateurs, who took second and third places.

Additional awards and prizes

Andrei UA6BFE gets the Certificate for printing of 1000 “Standard” QSL cards by UA1OMS QSL Print (sponsored by UA1OMS QSL Print) for first Place in European Russia /P.

Vladimir RK8A gets the Certificate for printing of 1000 “Standard” QSL cards by UA1OMS QSL Print (sponsored by UA3LMR) for first Place in Asian Russia /P.

Vladislav UW5EJJ, who has worked with 140 different stations via SAT-transponders, will be awarded with the special pennant signed by cosmonaut Alexander Volkov U4MIR (sponsored by Cosmonaut Training Center named by Yuri Gagarin, RT3F Club Station).

Competition for the most distant QSO in groups QRP (up to 5 watts output) and QRPP (up to 1 Watt output) with subgroups CW, SSB and DIGI has collected 8 applications from participants from four countries. Special prizes for the most distant QSO (sponsor RK8A) will granted to:

An additional prize for the furthest QSO with a power of 500 milliwatts or less gets RU3NJC / p for QSO with SM7ZDI with distance of 1747 km (0.25 W).

Yoshio JH1DIS as the only most distant Marathon Participant will get a prize for QSO with VK4BLK at distance 6647 km.

Igor R2AJA gets portable lightweight, quick assembling yagi antenna for 145+435 MHz (sponsor RN3ANT) on the results of the lottery.

Outdoor QRP Activity Group thanks all the participants for their support of the Marathon and interesting stories about the field outings and invites everyone in the World to take an active participation in the “Field Flowers 2017” QRP Marathon.

We will try to do this year also interesting and contented with a variety of activities!

73! Outdoor QRP Activity Group team

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P.S. We were pleasantly surprised that donation was received from one of the Marathon participants. We assure that donation was used for the Marathon goal.
Thank you OM!

Details

26 December 2016

Outdoor QRP Activity Group invites radio amateurs around the world to take part in the “Field Flowers” yearlong marathon. The aim of the Marathon is increasing of the interest for outdoor (fields) activity with QRP rigs, experiments with antennas and equipment as well as improving of skills of operating in a case of emergency.

We stand for careful handling of nature and presenting of the most beautiful and interesting places of our planet Earth on the HAM radio air.

The “Field Flowers” outdoor QRP Marathon starts at 00:00 UTC of January 01, 2017 and lasts a whole year, until 23:59 UTC of December 31, 2017. Marathon participants will meet with surprises like as interesting short-term gaming events. Absolute winner and winners inside categories will be determined in beginning of 2018 after the Marathon completing.

Contacts are credited with any HAM radio correspondents, on any bands, by any modes, but the Marathon participant's radio station must operate outdoors only with QRP (no more than 5 watts CW / DIGI and no more than 10 watts of peak output power in Phone) or less output power.

Duplicated QSO on different bands or modes are not counted. Besides that, duplicated contacts are not counted even if correspondent uses any additions ¹ to call sign.

Contacts, made in the framework of any activities of other amateur radio societies (i.e. SOTA, NPOTA, GMA, Fox Hunt, any contests, field or activity days etc.), may be applied for the Marathon, if conditions of these QSO correspond to requirements of the Marathon.

Radio stations are considered to be field, if they meet the criteria:

• autonomous power supply is used, such as Battery Pack, solar panel, gasoline generator, etc.;
• radio station is located at a distance no closer than 300 meters from the inhabited locality. Placing of radio station in parks and recreational areas, located in settlements, allowed if outside of capital buildings ^2A and autonomous power supply used;
• stationary antennas ² are not used at the position of the participant.

Scoring group of participants

• Portable (P) — participants operating with a fixed outdoor (field) position;
• Mobile (M) — participants operating on move: bike, car, motorcycle, etc.;
• Pedestrian Mobile (PM) — walking participants operating on go.

Participation is allowed in one or several groups.

Points and multipliers

Each valid QSO counts 1 point.

Additional bonuses will be added for the scoring of each outing in case of:

• multiplier x2 for new outdoor location ³ or new route ⁴ ;
• for an illustrated story (reportage) ⁵ published by author on www.outdoorqrp.org website based on voting ⁶ of authorized visitors:
  – I place +50 points;
  – II place +30 points;
  – III place +10 points.
  Bonuses for the story (reportage) are awarded immediately after the vote completing.
• for participation in the Seasonal Activity Days on the basis of points obtained for established QSOs (bonuses for new place / route is not used in determining the winners of Activity Days):
  – I place +50 points;
  – II place +30 points;
  – III place +10 points.

Reports

Reports on participation should be sent to the email address in a week at the end of the outdoor outing.

The "Subject" field of e-mail message should contain only call sign of a participant and the kind of report - Marathon, seasonal activity days, etc.

The body of e-mail message should contain:

1. Scoring group.
2. Is outdoor location or route new or old?
3. Geographical coordinates, clearly indicating the place of activity or a route track attached ⁷ .
4. Attached file ⁸ — extract from the log in ADIF format. It is recommended to previously remove all of the duplicated QSOs.

Additionally, there may be specified:

• postal address for sending a Marathon Participant Certificate (only in the first report);
• any additional pertinent information.

Intermediate results are published on the website www.outdoorQRP.org as processing of incoming reports.

Awards

Every participant of the Marathon who has sent at least one report, regardless of the number of QSO, will get free by mail a Certificate of the Marathon Participant.

The absolute winner and winners by each group (P, M, PM) in the World will be determined by results of the whole year after the completion of the Marathon and will be awarded by plaques if there are at least 10 participants in each group.

Second and third places winners will be awarded by special Diplomas of Winner.

The Rules may be supplemented ⁹ by provisions regarding founding of new awards and prizes, lotteries, and other rewards for Participants of the Marathon.

Special prize for most distant QSO

We announce a competition for all Marathon participants for most distant QSO by CW, SSB and DIGI in Portable (P) group, besides that regardless of the emission mode for most distant QSO in the Mobile (M) and Pedestrian Mobile (PM) Groups. An additional prize will be issued for most distant QSO established by power 500 mW or less.

Application with:
— call sign;
— QSO data;
— equipment and power used;
— distance from applicant to the correspondent;
— both WW-Locators
should be sent until January 10, 2018 to e-mail .
Subject of your message should contain your callsign and word "competition".

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¹ — for example, if the call sign UR0ET is already credited earlier, any other QSO with DL/UR0ET or UR0ET/a, etc. are considered as duplication and do not counted into score.

² — antennas are deployed / installed on arrival to the position before activity and dismantled at the end of activity prior to leaving of the position.

^2A — at least 150 meters away from the capital buildings — residentials, industrial buildings, shopping centers, etc.;
Sports facilities — ramps, ice and skating rinks, sports fields etc., cafes, kiosks with ice-cream/water/bakery/fastfood and newspapers, summer theater, outbuilding, pavilions and pergolas, attractions etc. are not included into this limitation.
Refinement takes effect since 01 March 2017.

³ — position is considered as a NEW LOCATION, if its distance from any of earlier used locations is at least 500 m and within first 24 hours since first QSO at this location. Bonus multiplier will be applied for all QSO points, earned in this new location within first 24 hours only.

⁴ — route is considered as NEW ROUTE if its any part, used for establishing QSO, is outlying at least for 500 m from same parts of any previous routes of the participant.

⁵ — a story (reportage) should be published in two weeks after the completion of the corresponding activity.

⁶ — voting in a special electronic form on the web site begins every 15th and ends every 30th day of the month following the reporting one. Each authorized visitor may vote for only one story each month. Each author may apply any number of his reportages (stories) for voting.

⁷ — geographical coordinates in any format (DD MM SS, DD MM.MM, DD.DDDDD, where DD - degrees, MM - minutes, SS - seconds) or GPS-track in .gpx or .kml format, or link to a map with the track (gpsies.com, maps.google.com, maps.yandex.ru etc.).

⁸ — we recommend to name the attached file in form of CALLSIGN_17.MM.DD.adi.

⁹ — Marathon Participants, other interested persons, organizations, communities can become sponsors and founders of awards, raffles, lotteries in any other nominations and categories (for example, modes, bands, territories, continents, distance, number of outputs, the best publication on a specific topic, etc.) in coordination with the organizers of the Marathon.

 

 

 

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Rules of “Field Flowers 2016” Marathon