2025 WA0RC 2m Simplex Contest

2025 2m Simplex Contest Event Flyer

In 2024, the Waypoint Amateur Radio Club (employee club at Garmin HQ in Olathe, KS) hosted a 2m Simplex Contest for all those in the Kansas City Metro. Based on good feedback from participants, we decided to run it again with some minor tweaks to the rules. As Vice President of the club, I took it on to coordinate this contest again as a fun even for our club members and operate from the club shack as a bonus station. 

Last year we only had eight participants submit a log, so my goal was to get more activity going. As with last year, I tried to advertise the event on Larry’s List (email list for KC-area hams) as well as promoting at our club meetings. Unfortunately, we had fewer participants this year, although everyone still seemed to have a good time. The key rule change we made was to allow people to work from three different zip codes during the two hour event instead of two with last year. My hope was that this would keep things a bit more lively throughout the entire two hours of the event. While we did have a couple participants move around, there were still long periods of lulls with a couple stations resorting to constantly calling CQ looking for contacts (me included).

With all that said, Congratulations to Josh, N0JTG, who will receive a $20 gift certificate to Associated Radio in Overland Park! Josh was active during the whole two hour period and really worked for it! Full results are listed in the table below.

Feedback from participants was again generally good; it seems those who participate do like this type of contest. I do too! It is just hard to drum up enough interest to keep it lively for the whole two hours. For next year, I am considering shrinking it down to an hour in more of a sprint format. Some participants have also suggested making 1.25m and 70cm fair game too to introduce some more complexity to things. We also may try a different time of year as it was the same weekend in April for both 2024 and 2025. If you participated (or didn’t) and have any ideas, feel free to reach out!