MARAC Information

We welcome you to join us in the quest of making a contact with an amateur operator in all 3077 counties in the United States. It is fascinating to follow the mobile operators as they move about the country, you never know which county they will be in next. If you are a mobile operator we give you a special invitation to join us. There are many counties out there that don't have a mobile or fixed operator nearby.

Most of the time the nets run at a pace that is fast and furious with mobiles making contacts at the rate of 8 to 10 per minute. You will also notice that we do not use phonetics in the call signs. The reason for this is obvious if you listen to the net for a while. The use of phonetics slows down the cadence and rhythm of the mobile operator. The mobile operators train their ears to hear call signs and cannot take the time to translate what they are not used to hearing. When you first start working the mobiles you will notice that your call sign will be recognized immediately in just a few days.

We are also very active on CW with nets being held on 14.0565, 7.0565 and 10.1225. The CW nets runs differently than the SSB nets so if you have questions contact an NCS station during a slow period. We also have some tutorials you can reference at http://www.marac.org/tuturials.htm.

The first award everyone works toward is the United States of America - County Award (USA-CA) Now sponsored by MARAC as of 1 Nov 2024. The official rules are located at USA-CA Rules

MARAC Roadrunner Logger is a great program that will help you track all your county hunting awards. Visit Http://www.marac.org/logger.htm for more information.

Other awards (many different kinds) are available through the Mobile Amateur Radio Awards Club (MARAC). This provides those who have finished the USA-CA award something else to work toward. Some of the awards can be worked for at the same time as USACA. For information about the MARAC awards visit http://www.marac.org/Awards.pdf for more details.

MARAC also sponsors a National Convention and smaller Mini's where we meet the "family" from all over the world, and several regional conferences in different parts of the US. Visit http://marac.org/events.htm for more information on gatherings.

http://countyhunter.com
http://www.countyhunterweb.org/

All are cross linked so you can visit these for additional information. We welcome you to accept the challenge and look forward to hearing you working counties soon!

If you have specific questions please feel free to email us at help(at)marac.org

Notes for CW Ops

This section will provide you with a number of scenarios that you may run into while county hunting on CW. You will be provided with a script of the sample cw exchange and we have also provided a sound file of each scenario so you can hear how each example will sound on the air. Special thanks to W0QE for creating the sound files and sample scripts.

There are some tutorials available here:More cw info.

Please note: This information is provided to help county hunters. MARAC does not operate a county hunting net. County hunting nets are run completely by volunteers. At this time there are no specific NCS schedules.

CW Net Q signals and Common Abbreivations

The cw nets use a number of Q signals such as QNF, QRV, QSP and others that you many not be familiar with. Click here for a listing of the most common Q signals and a description of their usage.