The news we were all dreading was made official a few days ago: the 2020 New England Division Convention has been officially cancelled. While distressing, on a personal level I applaud Bob, K1IW, and his team for making the hard, but right call.
All we can now hope and say is, “Next year, at Marlborough!”
I’ll let Bob take it from here.
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Large indoor gatherings such as our convention are currently prohibited by Massachusetts state law. This is highly unlikely to change by November. Unfortunately, we will not be able to hold a physical convention this year.
However, we do plan some virtual activities, all free. We are currently working on the details for these and will keep you posted as they develop:
We plan to the operate the W1A special event station over the weekend of October 31st – November 1st. To avoid a conflict with the November Sweepstakes, we moved this to one week earlier. W1A will be operated from the operator’s home stations. Dennis, W1UE, is coordinating the schedule. If you would like to be a W1A operator, please contact W1UE by email at w1ue@hamxposition.org. For those who would like to work W1A, we will be posting the operating schedule once it is ready. Note that this will give regular attendees the unique opportunity to work W1A (something which would have been more difficult for many to do operating portable from a hotel room).
We will also be hosting a Saturday evening virtual banquet on November 7th, featuring a guest speaker. There will be no charge for this event. Order your favorite take-out or delivery, pull up a chair to your screen and join your friends for an interesting presentation. After the talk, virtual break-out rooms will be available for you to converse with your “table”.
The Nashua Area Radio Club will be running an online version of the “Ham Boot Camp”. This is a multisession program for hams young and old to learn about the various activities they can do with their license. Details to follow.
From the entire HamXposition committee, we wish you good health, be safe, and we look forward to seeing everyone in person at our 2021 convention on July 23-24-25, 2021.
73,
Bob – K1IW
Chairman, HamXposition 2020
Today is the eve of the most atypical Field Day in the history of the League! Field Day was first done in 1933 and the only pandemic event that can rival what we are going through today was the Spanish Flu in 1917, years before.