Join us in MDXC/SWL!
The SWL Section of the Mediterraneo DX Club was created in June 2005 to
gather SWLs from all over the world to promote SWL activity, and to
support DXPeditions.
Subscribe and join our
members!
SWL ACTIVITY IN FINLAND
Finland Short Wave Listeners Association OH3SWL was established in november
5th 1948.
It was founded to ensure that SWL's who sent QSL cards to radioamateurs will
receive their confirmation cards. Most of radioamateurs at that time didn't
appreciate QSL requestings from SWLs.
These days SRAL (Finnish RadioAmateur League) could have new amateurs among
listeners.
In spite that many SWL's did get their own license and became radioamateurs,
many others still having SWL callsign and even take part in the contests as
SWL.
OH3SWL had few hundred members in the period between 1985 and 1995. Today
only 120 members still joining us. I should mention that If anyone wants to
join us it is ok, but only Finnish SWLs do get a callsign, or if you live in
Finland or have summer residence here, you can also have Finnish SWL
callsign. This is because that callsigns are based on Finnish regions (10)
as for my call, OH3 (= this region is in Southern Finland).
Few SWLs are considered as active SWL's (taking part of contests, listening
bands more than once in a week). Beside me (OH3-911), most active members
are Antero OH2-612, Erkki OH1-688, Pauli OH2-477. I am sure that many others
are still active and regularly scan the bands, but do not show in contest
results. This is sad, because here in Finland some contests have dropped out
SWL section. Also the IOTA Contest (one of the biggest contests) do not have
SWL section anymore, but thanks to MDXC/SWL that SWLs can join radioamateurs
in this nice activity by organizing the SWL Category of this contest.
Veijo, OH3-911 in his SWL Station
May be the main problem which discourage SWLs to participate in contests is
the need to prove the logged contact by entering both callsigns.
unfortunately, no contesting or logging software can export a valid log
which include both calls.
In addition, many organizers do not accept paper logs, so an SWL need to
make some kind of electronic log - by hand.
Perhaps software designers should think in this matter. This would rise the
number of logs entries.
The softwares designed by Marek SP7DQR for the IOTA SWL Contest (logging and
logs checking) organized by the SWL Section of the Mediterraneo DX Club, can
be a good start to devolope more advanced softwares with more features (detecting
dupes, real-time score calculation...)
What's the future of SWL activity? Who knows, many listeners pass the
licence test and "forget" SWL activity. Many others has come back, but not
so active anymore.
I wish to all SWL's good spirit and keep activity going. We are still world
best listeners!
