The Planning for MANNA@80 Continues...

Planning for the special event stations commemorating the life-saving food drops to NW Netherlands near the end of World War II is now in full swing. 62 nationalities were part of Bomber Command in WW2. 

Please visit Operation Manna @ 80 for a full list of stations around the globe. Here are the Canadian stations participating:

VB7MAN Surrey Amateur Radio Communications

In Canada, Surrey Amateur Radio Communications (SARC) has been granted special event callsign VB7MAN from April 1^st to May 10^th. We will be on the air from our training station and elsewhere prior to, during, and after the event and will seek involvement of the high school students from our RF Communications class. Contacts with Europe can be sporadic from our location but we are generally able to contact North and South America, Asia, and Oceania. We have created a QSL card to commemorate the event. The card bears the $100 Royal Canadian Mint gold and silver coin struck in 2020 for the 75^th anniversary. 

We will update this page as plans progress but hope to make a QSO with you in April or May. Any certified amateur in BC may operate the special event callsign, as long as it is only used in one location at a time. If you wish to use the call on any band or mode, a Google calendar has been set up to reserve the call for your use between April 1st and May 10th. If you wish to book an operating time for VB7MAN, please contact VB7MAN@gmail.com.

John VE7TI
Coordinator VB7MAN@gmail.com

 

VB6MAN Calgary Amateur Radio Association

CARA will be operating from the Bomber Command Museum of Canada in Nanton, Alberta. They will activate on April 25, 26, and 27th and May 9 and 10. The final dates and hours of operations will depend on the radio amateur operators participating.

 

VE1MAN Nova Scotia

The Canadian teams closest to Europe will be operating from their club station as VE1MAN. They may be activating from a former WW2 air base or another location of significance to tie in with the event.

 

Radio Amateurs of Canada published an article about MANNA@80 in the March-April issue of The Canadian Amateur, as did the Radio Society of Great Britain in their national magazine RADCOM.

~

Special Event Station PA80OV

Radio Club Limburg

 

announces

Special Event Station

PA80OV

Next week, members of Radio Club Limburg (https://rclb.nl) in the North Limburg region of  The Netherlands, will activate:

 

PA80OV is a special event station to commemorate Operation Veritable, celebrating 80 years of freedom.  Operation Veritable, namesake of the station, and the successor of Operation Market Garden, was the northern part of an Allied pincer movement in the Second World War.

We are back in 2025 for the third consecutive time with this special event station; having added another 5 years to our callsign.

Members of Radio Club Limburg will activate the callsign PA80OV from February 13 to 28, 2025, to work as many amateur radio operators across the world as possible. If you're in the area,  you can visit our station in the old town hall in the city of Gennep, The Netherlands between February14 and 16.

Whether you are an amateur radio operator, hoping to contact a new country, a new callsign, or you're a casual visitor, you're welcome to our website:

 https://rclb.nl/pa80ov

We hope to hear and work you.

On behalf of the PA80OV team. 

Jan, PA2P
https://rclb.nl/pa80ov

 

Operation Manna 80

A very special, special event station

SARC has been asked to participate in a large-scale special event late in April commemorating the relief efforts of the winter of 1944-45 to drop tons of food to the starving population of NW Holland. It is well described at: Operation Manna @ 80 and in the video https://youtu.be/0PwhYFdzY_Q. 

Amateur stations from the drop zones in Holland, air force bases in Britain, plus the Allied forces that provided aircraft and pilots, including the UK, Canada, The US, Poland and Australia will be represented by special event stations in those countries.

Three UK Teams, one at the International Bomber Command Centre, another at former RAF Binbrook (an Operation Manna Airfield in the UK) and another at the 100th Bomb Group Museum at Thorpe Abbots representing the US operation Chowhound from a former Chowhound airfield.

The national Radio Scouting team (Plusscouts PA3EFR/J) will be operating from an Operation Manna drop zone near The Hague, The Netherlands. Read on for further details on this team and their radio station location at  The Team in the Netherlands – Operation Manna @ 80

The stations will be active April 25-27 (Friday through Sunday) using variations of the xx80MAN callsign. Here at SARC, we will be using VB7MAN (because of Canadian location designations we are required to have a '7' in our callsign). Visit VB7MAN - Callsign Lookup by QRZ Ham Radio

Children and youth activities will also be included and there will be activity on HF, DMR and VHF

https://manna80.radio/w p-content/uploads/2024/12/Award_new.jpg 

When we activate, you can find out if we're on the air
from our HamAlert spots:

Our Grid.Radio Location

There will be a full article in the next Communicator (March 2^st)

Our email address is VB7MAN@gmail.com and our activation calendar is here.

~ John VE7TI

Manna80 and other Special Event Stations

 You may wish to add these to your calendar

We will publish a report in The Communicator's next issue.

I would like to inform you about a few special event stations we will put up in the next few months. 

February 14,15 and 16th, PA80OV will be operational from Gennep, Netherlands. 
I will be a guest operator, and probably the organisation has written to you allready, but it is nice to know. 

https://radioclublimburg.nl/pa80ov/

~ Sander

----------------------------

The two others are also very interesting. 

At the end of WW2, the Netherlands suffered a hunger winter. Allied forces conducted a humanitarian action called Operation Manna. 
In April this year, 80 years ago, tons of food was dropped over the western part of the Netherlands, saving many people from starvation and death. 

To commemorate this event, we will activate a couple of stations, including GB80MAN, VE80MAN, VK80MAN, PH80MAN. 
We are hoping Poland is participating as well, and we hope the USA will put up a station. 

https://manna80.radio/the-team-in-the-netherlands/

As you have seen some SES from us, we will put up PH80MAN at a former drop zone. 
I have added a flyer with this mail.  This one is in Dutch, but an English version is under construction... will follow as soon as it is done!

Lastly, I would like to inform you about PA82AD. 
This is a call we used 5 years ago to celebrate 75 years of freedom. We held a DX-pedition but due to COVID, we could not really complete our goals. 
Please read the qrz.com page from bottom up. 

https://www.qrz.com/db/PA82AD

To finish this DX-pedition as planned, we will be operational for a very last time. 

Thanks again for reading, and hope to hear you on the bands. 

73, 

~ Sander PD9HIX

 

Hams meet Marines

A special event station from The Netherlands

This is an HF activity on January 23 from PA25MC, which will be on the air for just one day to introduce Marines to the world of ham radio. They will try to use as many HF-bands as possible on SSB. They remind us to please remember that Amateur procedures are new to them, but will do everything to get them up to speed quickly. 

Marines are used to speaking English but naturally keep their communications short. The organizers would really appreciate it if you contribute to a successful event by connecting with them!

PA25MC is organized and supported by PI4VBD, the club station of the Royal Army. Their station will always comply with the user regulations and regulations for radio amateurs and has no military function.

PI4VBD Royal Netherlands Army Signal Regiment on air 

https://verbindingsdienst.nl/ 

https://www.instagram.com/signalregiment_pi4vbd/

QSL info for PZ5JT

Read carefully - send your card with return address, and without anything extra direct to:

PI4VBD / Verbindingsdienst,

Barchman Wuytierslaan 198, 

3818 LN Amersfoort, 

The Netherlands

~ Ton and Klaas-Jan

  John VE7TI

The Operation Market Garden Special Event Station

Commemorating 80 years 

An important stage in the liberation of Western Europe

Operation Market Garden was an Allied military operation during the Second World War fought in the German-occupied Netherlands from 17 to 25 September 1944. Its objective was to create a 103 km salient into German territory with a bridgehead over the Nederrijn (Lower Rhine River), creating an Allied invasion route into northern Germany. This was to be achieved by two sub-operations: seizing nine bridges with combined US and British airborne forces (´Market´) followed by British land forces swiftly following over the bridges (´Garden´).

The airborne operation was undertaken by the First Allied Airborne Army with the land operation by XXX Corps of the British Second Army. The airborne soldiers, numbering more than 41,000, were dropped at sites where they could capture key bridges and hold the terrain until the land forces arrived. The land forces consisted of ten armoured and motorised brigades with a similar number of soldiers. The land forces advanced from the south along a single road surrounded by flood plain on both sides. The plan anticipated that they would cover the 103 km from their start to the bridge across the Rhine in 48 hours. About 100,000 German soldiers were in the vicinity to oppose the allied offensive. It was the largest airborne operation of the war up to that point (Wikipedia ©). Perhaps the most famous, after D-Day, in the history of the Second World War.

As part of Operation Market Garden paratroopers of the Allied forces, such as American, British, Canadian, Polish and Dutch troops, landed in the Nijmegen region on 17 September 1944. The region became a battlefield during Operation Market Garden and most of the inhabitants took refuge in the woods or neighbouring towns. It took more than a week of heavy fighting before parts of the region were temporarily liberated. Many people and military were killed and buildings and bridges were destroyed. At the cost of many young soldiers the important Waal-bridge in Nijmegen was conquered. In our collective mind the entire region was completely liberated in 1944, but this was only for a period of three weeks. There was still hard fighting during the winter and complete liberation was not achieved until may 1945.

YouTube video: Operation Market Garden

The special event

From September 13 to 19 a special event station will be operating in the Nijmegen region of the Netherlands commemorating 8Ø years of freedom. The callsign is PA8ØOMG.

During 7 days they will activate the callsign PA8ØOMG and work amateur radio operators across the world. If you find yourself in the vicinity of Groesbeek and Nijmegen, be sure to visit us throughout the activities of the special event station. We are situated at one of the exact landing grounds of the 82nd Airborne division in 1944. Our website https://radioclublimburg.nl/pa80omg/index.html

~

Special Event Station TM80DDAY

Commemorating the 80th anniversary of
the Allied assault on Normandy beaches

From June 4 to 9, 2024, a number of crew members of the Plusscouts PA3EFR/J and other Radio Scouters will be traveling to Normandy (Omaha Beach) to support the international activities of the commemoration services around 80 years of D-DAY. 

Operators of this call are the operators of the PA3EFR/J-crew, a specialist group of Scouters, members of Scouting Netherlands through the national Fellowship called Plusscouts. In addition, we have invited some distinguished guests to join our team. This crew primarily brings TDOTA and JOTA to Scouting groups that are eager to get involved in the annual global Radio Scouting activities. Additional information on this years crew can be found on the Plusscouts Website. The station is valid for 2 points in the Dutch Radio Scouting Award scheme.

The good news is that we will be hosted again by the D-Day Museum at Omaha Beach. A radio shack in the backyard of the museum will be part of our radio station and associated radio scouting activities.

QSL cards will be sent out after the event. 

Some specific Radio details:

Radio waves (+- QRM)

1.882 MHz LSB

3.682 MHz LSB

7.182 MHz LSB

14.182 MHz USB

21.182 MHz USB

28.482 MHz USB

DMR TalkGroup 907 - JOTA

We join our fellow Amateur Radio Operators in remembering the brave souls who fought for the liberation of Europe. 

Please help to commemorate this historic event by attempting a contact during the period indicated.

~ Sander PD9HIX

   John VE7TI