Thirteen IslandHF club members (see below) attended a Zoom call on February 13th to discuss two major initiatives. An IslandHF Grid Square Contest was discussed first. The second was Field Day 2024 which will be reviewed in a later blog.

The grid square contest concept is multipart consisting of two or three implementation phases. Initially a 40 meter SSB frequency would be identified and established for club member calls on a regular basis. No net control would be involved but a time would be identified for CQing. The basis for the effort is to test the concept of getting members together via an HF call frequency. Furthermore, member QSOs/traffic would be used to familiarize radio amateurs in BC with the IslandHF Radio Association and to hopefully think about membership.

A second phase, which is more involved, would be a weekend event when all eight Vancouver Island grid squares have at least one operating club member. Much more needs to be discussed for this phase to be successful. For example, three of the grid squares have no IslandHF members. Our grid square contest will not be successful without members living/operating in all eight grid squares.

Finally, the idea of having an IslandHF Grid Square certificate available for any licensed radio amateur who has made contacts in all eight grid squares is being discussed. Logged contacts with IslandHF members at any time would count towards getting a certificate.