What

In celebration of the 70th anniversary of the April 12, 1955 US approval of the Salk polio vaccine, NARS is delighted to be running the Polio On The Air event from April 5 - 19, 2025 (UTC)! (To avoid confusion with our friends at Parks on the Air, we will be calling CQ SALK on all fashionable protocols, rather than CQ POTA.)

We will be operating the Special Event Stations W7P, W7O, W7L, W7I, and W0O! Click on each callsign to see its most recent logs (not always updated in realtime).

For digital modes, PSKReporter: W7P - W7O - W7L - W7I - W0O

Find an Operator

Here is our operating schedule, or see the embed below! That said, we may be on the air more than is indicated on this schedule. We’re also posting on Mastodon when new people go on the air!

Why

Polio was bad and vaccines are good. While thankfully, unlike 70 years ago, there is no opposition to vaccines anymore (because vaccines made it so nobody has to die of smallpox, measles, mumps, and all the other diseases we have safe and effective vaccines for), we think this incredible achievement needs periodic celebration to ensure it is never forgotten. Hence, we’re re-spreading the good news, in keeping with our charter: “…to foster joy, goodwill, understanding, and experiential enlightenment of all people….”

Also, QSL cards are great!

Participate

Check out our Polio on the Air Operator’s Guide!

How to Contact Us

We will be operating the Special Event Stations W7P, W7O, W7L, W7I, and W0O throughout the period. Make contact with one, get a QSL card. Make contact with all five, get five QSL cards—and something really neat happens if you collect all five!

In order to ensure that our friends with no HF station, location, time, or privileges can participate, we are going to be operating on many different modes. You can get all the contacts on one mode/band or many!

HF Digital

  • FT8: look for our stations calling CQ SALK on FT8 and FT4. PSKReporter is your friend! We also love HamAlert if you want to get push notifications to your phone (or whatever) when a particular station comes online.

HF Voice

  • SSB: We’ll have SSB voice stations on different bands throughout the operating period, calling “CQ SALK” and “Polio on the Air” and generally spreading the good word that vaccines are safe, effective, and have saved billions of lives.

VHF/UHF Voice

  • EchoLink/AllStar: We will operate EchoLink and AllStar nodes with assistance from our friends at Pride Radio Group:
    • Allstar: 61672
    • Echolink: 934860
    • Others: https://prideradionetwork.weebly.com/network–repeater-info.html
  • Some members may also be offering local/regional VHF opportunities to get the contacts! Check out the operating schedule!

QSL Policy

We will send you a QSL card to your name and address as listed in HamQTH! Please make sure your information there is up to date. Unlike QRZ, HamQTH is delighted to call you the name you wish to be called.

We will upload our logs to LotW and, where applicable, POTA!

We will ignore QRZ. (We don’t use QRZ. They refuse to accept transfolks’ chosen names (despite it being fine with the FCC to use a name that isn’t your “legal” name), and if their paid staff still thinks it’s cool to be “Master of Africa” in 2025, Cecil Rhodes would love to meet them. When we tried to point this issue–and the issue of paid QRZ members sending right-wing screeds—out to the QRZ leadership, they banned our members from their site and took our club call with them. We prefer to let the sort of people who think endorsing racism is A-OK hang out together, enjoying a refreshing swim, far from the rest of us.)

Donations

If you care to donate to cover the cost of your QSL cards, we would love that. Please send your donations to the organizations below.

Information About Vaccines