Hello and welcome to the wonderful world of Midwestern U.S. contesting!

W9SMC is the call of The Society of Midwest Contesters. Please visit our club web page at http://www.w9smc.com.

Periodically, different members use the W9SMC callsign in various contests. Most members are located in either Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, or Wisconsin.

Our club covers the states which we view as 'propagationally challenged'. We affectionately call our disposition the Blackhole. RF seems to arrive to our locations, but never seems to propagate out as well as we would like! The east and west coasts of the U.S. have a distinct advantage, mainly more water and less obstacles that their signals have to travel over and around. Take a tour of some of the SMC members stations at http://www.w9smc.com/smcstation.htm.

An annual highlight for the club is hosting a suite at the Crowne Plaza Hotel during the Dayton Hamvention http://www.hamvention.org/ Since the club is geographically dispersed, we really enjoy reuniting with our on-the-air competitors at the suite.

SMC organizes teams for various contests. Most notably, the North American QSO Party and the North American Sprint. Information on these contests can be found at http://www.arrl.org/contests/ The club also competes against other clubs in the ARRL Sweepstakes - in 2000, we won the Unlimited Title and shocked the competition. We also participate in the CQWorldWide DX and ARRL DX contests.

We welcome new members who share our interest in amateur radio contesting. Join the club by emailing us at the address above.

Many of our members are active during just about every contest! Please take a few minutes during your weekend and look for some W9s! Thanks and see you down the log. CQ Contest, 59(9) Blackhole, QSL, QRZ.