Most of the charter members date to the early 70's when a club called The IndyDXers was active. Joe, KJ9D, revitalized the contesting portion of the Club in the early 80's after the contesting versus Dxing split. The ARRL chartered club name was the Central Indiana Contesters. After branching out, the name changed to the Hoosier Contesters (a.k.a. HICKS - Hoosier International Contest Killers Society). In 1999 the club voted to change the club name again (to it's current name) to promote all DX and Contest activity. In 2000, the club callsign was acquired in honor of the late Joe Sego, KJ9D.
One of the early challenges to the club was the use of PacketCluster. With the low sunspot cycle in the mid-80's the club used the cluster to get amateurs active again. As a result the KJ9D node was one of the first established in the Indiana area and linking to other nodes was not easy. We used the help of many non-DXers and non-contesters to learn the technology we needed and today we have a very robust network system. As Dave, W9ZRX stated "True to the DX'ers goal-driven behavior, we learned all the technologies needed to build a high-speed Network"!!
In 2002, the club took ownership and is the sponsor of the "Indiana QSO Party" (usually held the first weekend in May). It has helped sponsor numerous DXpeditions including recent trips to KH5, KH7, E3, and FO0/c. Members have also donated to the recent PI4COM tragedy. WN9O usually hosts a multi-single station for the CQWW and ARRL DX contests to promote camaraderie. Another major club activity of the year is Field Day. During the past few years we have been able to consistently place in the Top 10 of the 2A category.
29 members are holders of DXCC and 3 members are on the Honor Roll. Approximately 90% of the active operators are also members of the Society of Midwest Contesters (SMC).
For more information about DXing, contesting or the Hoosier DX and Contest Club in general, please contact one of the officers or see our website at http://www.hdxcc.org.
Kevin / WN9O