YARC’s Youth Contesting Program (YCP) is a weekend program for groups of young amateur radio contesters throughout the US and Canada to meet up at a nearby-as-possible contest-grade stations during the large HF contests.

Our previous YCP was somewhat successful, in that we didn’t entirely fail – we had one successful and rewarding pairing between Patrick KE8KLC and the Voice of America Museum Amateur Radio Club WC8VOA. It helped that he was only a 15 minute drive away, and that the VOA volunteers pulled in a lot of hours preparing for the event. Our biggest pitfall was a low number of both host station and youth contesters. There’s only one way to get more applicants, and that’s to try it again!

The 2019 IARU HF Championships take place 13-14 July 2019 from 1200 Saturday to 1159 Sunday UTC. It’s both a CW and Phone contest, and is one of the years biggest.

It works like this – we will attempt to pair a small group (up to 4) of young contesters interested in operating with a “big gun” station owner interested in hosting the youth group. The contesters will operate from the station, and the host has the option to help the youth improve their skills, provide advice, and even operate alongside. We will try to keep it such that young hams will only require a relatively short drive (ideally no more than 5 hours) to keep travel costs low. As such, this will require the participation of as many operators and hosts as possible, but it might so happen that a valid match may not exist. With your help, it shouldn’t be hard to find pairings within an hour’s drive.

All you have to do right now is signup! If you’re a young ham (or know a young ham) (under age 27 or so) with at least a little bit of contesting experience, and you’d be interested in spending a weekend in July at a contest-grade ham radio station, OR if you’re the owner of such a station, sign up at the Google form here: https://yarc.world/ycp/ or scroll down to the bottom to find the form there.

YARC YCP is inspired by the efforts of YOTA’s YCP, as well as Team Exuberance and we hope to inspire a big chunk of young hams into becoming the greatest contesters of the 21st century.

Note – since we’re trying to keep this an affordable event for our young ops, we require that the station is within a 3 hour drive. And since the North America is a big place, we can’t promise that you’ll be selected as a host or operator, especially if either no young ops signup nearby your station or there’s no station near young operators. Since this is our first second try, we probably still have a lot to learn about this, so bear with us!

Thanks,

Sterling, NØSSC
YARC Programs & Outreach Dude