Having achieved its goals in the Azores, the Radio Arcala group (OH8X) will bid farewell to CR2X during the ARRL International DX Contest (SSB) over the March 5-6 weekend. An alliance of serious Finnish contesters and their partners, Radio Arcala aims to apply the latest telecommunication technology to Amateur Radio, using contesting as a demonstration test bed and to push the envelope. By targeting youth, the group also hopes to attract newcomers. CR2X — The Azores-Finland Friendship Consortium — was established to serve those aims.

“The CR2X project was to lasted 5 years, eventually extended for some time to accommodate the strange behavior of sunspots in the present cycle,” said Radio Arcala spokesperson Martti Laine, OH2BH. “The project has taken all major European contest records to a level that may last for some time.”

Now, for one last time, the Radio Arcala team will gather over the weekend in the Azores and modify the single-operator station to run in a multi-multi configuration — using the latest power-splitting techniques to share a single, triband stack among operator positions. “The CR2X operation in the 2016 ARRL SSB contest marks the inaugural use of such a slick station concept within a serious multioperator contest effort,” Laine said. It also will be road testing some new lightweight, Italian-made amplifiers.

Operators will include Azoreans CU2BV, CU2CE, and CU2DX, plus seven operators from Finland, including OH2BH, OH2PM, OH2UA, OH6KN, OH6KZP, OH7EA, and OH8NC. — Thanks to Radio Arcala (OH8X) and Martti Laine, OH2BH