Straight Key Month and 20th Anniversary of the SKCC

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The Straight Key Century Club (SKCC) is an organization dedicated to promoting the use of straight keys, bugs, and side-swipers for CW (Morse Code) communication in amateur radio.  This year marks the clubs 20th anniversary of dedicated to "old-school" radio operations, focusing on manual keys rather than automated or electronic keyers.

Club members volunteer to operate as K3Y, the clubs special event station where the "3" in K3Y is a nod to the letter "E," making the callsign look like "KEY."  The goal for many participants is to achieve a "Sweep" by contacting K3Y stations across different regions.

I operated the K3Y/5 for 29 shifts this month, making a personal best record of 548 QSOs with members.  More than 250 SKCC members signed up as Operators and logged well over 50,000 QSOs. 

All 50 US States were activated, plus 19 DX Entities and 4 Canadian Provinces. Many thanks to all the dedicated Club members who volunteered as Coordinators and SKM Operators






I was also able to complete the Grand Sweep, late in the month after working Brian 9J2BO from Zambia.  Other highlights for the month were working all 50 states (WAS),  including Alaska, Hawaii and Puerto Rico, 5 Canadian Provinces and many DX with Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Chili, Columbia, England, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Mexico, St Marteen, Switzerland and Zambia.  






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