Associação Radioamadores dos Açores, A.R.A. (CU2ARA) heartily welcomes the Slovak Contest Group (OM8A), a prominent European contest team, to visit the Azores and run the WPX CW Contest as a Multi-Single entry from the Island of San Miguel (EU-003)
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Jan, 2011
Adding to the success of the previous CU2A location, a lot of effort has been put into building a new radio site in Ribeira Grande, the second largest city in the Azores, located on the north coast of Sao Miguel Island. The new location also pushed the Azores team to new heights, making their services available to their immediate community.
On October 4, 2008 Mr. Ricardo José Moniz da Silva, the Mayor of the City of Ribeira Grande, paid a visit to the new location and made the very first radio contact at CR2A/CR2X. He spoke with Mr. Avelino Bettencourtt, CU2DE, another Azores operator in the remote village of Ribeira Quente.
The significance of this radio contact was that Mr Bettencourtt's amateur radio station offered the only means of communication from his village when the area was hit by heavy rains, causing a landfall and destroying many houses in his part if the island and isolating the entire area from the rest of the island.
The new CR2A/CR2X site will be fully set up for operation in any emergency situation, whether inter-island or over the whole of Azores Islands.
The CR2X radio location is manned by the Azores-Finland Friendship Consortium, and it is activated frequently in conjunction with Amateur Radio special events and radio competitions.
The group behind the Azores-Finland Friendship Consortium consists of:
Fernando Tavares, CU2BV , former Finnish Honorary Consul to the Azores; Jose Melo, CU2CE and Francisco Gil, CU2DX and from Finland, Martti Laine, OH2BH/CU2KG, Toni Linden, OH2UA/CU2KI and Juha Hulkko, OH8NC/CU2KH.
The station is part of the Arcala Extremes radio network.
