Rules of IARU Region-1 144 MHz September Contest
1. Eligible entrants
All licensed radio amateurs in Region 1 can participate in the contest. Multiple operator entries will be accepted, provided only one callsign is used during the contest . The contestants must operate within the letter and spirit of the contest and at no greater power than permitted in the ordinary licenses of their country. Stations operating under special high power licenses do so "hors concours" and cannot be placed in the contest proper.
2. Contest sections
The contest will comprise the following sections :
i) Stations operated by a single operator, with no assistance during the contest, using privately owned equipment and antennas and operating from any location.
ii) All other entrants
No more than one transmitter may be in use at any one time.
A participating station must operate from the same location throughout the event.
3. Date of contest
The contest will start on the first Saturday of September (2003: 6. Sept.).
4. Duration of contest
The contest will commence at 14,00 hours UTC on the Saturday and will end at 14,00 hours UTC on the Sunday.
5. Contacts
Each station can be worked only once, whether it is fixed, portable or mobile. If a station is worked again during the same contest, only one contact will count for points, but any duplicate contacts should be logged without claim for points and clearly marked as duplicates. Contacts made via active repeaters do not count for points. Any telephony contacts made with stations transmitting in the Telegraphy sub-band shall not count for points.
6. Type of emission
Contacts may be made in A1A, R3A, A3E or F3E (G3E).
7. Contest exchanges
Code numbers exchanged during each contact shall consist of the RS or RST report, followed by a serial number commencing with 001 for the first contact and increasing by one for each successive contact. This exchange must immediately be followed by the complete Locator of the sending station (examples : 59003 JO20DB or 579123 IN55CC).
Alternative “TONE” reports: For telegraphy contacts, in order to make the indication of special propagation modes possible, a letter may be given instead of the numbers 1-9 for the Tonality (T) report:
"a" for signals distorted by auroral propagation
"s" for signals distorted by "rain-scatter" propagation
"m" for signals distorted by multipath propagation.
(other letters can be added once the need arises)
8. Scoring
Points will be scored on the basis of one point per kilometre, i.e. the calculated distance in kms will be truncated to an integer value and 1 km will be added. The final claimed score must be shown on the top part of the first sheet.
In order to make contest scores comparable, for the conversion from degrees to kilometres a factor of 111.2 should be used when calculating distances with the aid of the spherical geometry equation (Noordwijkerhout, 1987).
9. Entries
The entries must be set out on log sheets fulfilling the requirements given under rule 12. Multi-operator stations shall be clearly marked as such. A copy of the logs must be sent to the national VHF Manager or the national Contest Committee postmarked not later than the second Monday following the contest weekend. Late entries will not be accepted. The submission of the logs implies that the entrant accepts the contest rules.
10. Judging of entries
The final judging of the entries shall be the responsibility of the organising society, whose decision shall be final. Entrants deliberately contravening any of these rules or flagrantly disregarding the IARU Region 1 bandplans shall be disqualified 1).
The claimed contact will be disqualified for an obviously wrongly stated Locator or a time error of
more than 10 minutes.
Claiming points for a duplicate contact will be penalized by deducting ten times the number of points claimed for that duplicate contact from the score.
Any error in the information logged by a station will result in the loss by the receiving station of all points for that contact.
The contest entrants will not be penalized for the failure of non-entrants to comply with the rules.
11. Awards
The winner in each section will receive a certificate.
12. Logsheets
A. On paper
The logsheets for use in the IARU Region 1 contest shall have an upright format not smaller than A4 and shall show the following columns in the order named :
- date
- time in UTC
- callsign of the station worked
- report sent
- report received
- Locator received
- number of points claimed
A standard cover sheet, containing the essential information required to judge the contest entry and with separate space for the comments of the national Contest Manager should be used.
A sample contest cover sheet is shown in Appendix 1.
The cover sheet should show the signature of the first operator certifying the correctness of the log submitted.
Paper logsheets prepared by the national societies and satisfying the above minimum requirements may be used.
B. In digital form
The logs shall be in the EDI-file format defined in Section IIIh of IARU Region 1 VHF Manual.
If EDI-file format is not possible for you, we will accept ANY electronic file format (ASCII, ADIF…). If you type your contest QSOs into PC, please send us that file. Whatever you send in digital form is better than paper log.
REMARKS
The following note is for the information of the participating societies. They may include them at their discretion in the rules published nationally.
Rule 9: The number of log copies to be submitted is left to the discretion of the national society, which may e.g. want a second copy for the judging of a simultaneously held national contest.
1 At the Region 1 Conference in Scheveningen (1972) it was decided that to effect this:
a) each VHF Manager and/or national Contest Committee shall be responsible for monitoring during contests. Additional monitoring stations may be appointed but these stations may not take part in the contest.
b) telephony contacts made with stations operating in the CW subband shall not count for points.
c) the national VHF Manager/Contest Committee is responsible for disqualification based upon the results obtained from a) and b) above.
Appendix 1
Sample cover sheet IARU R1 VHF contest logs
VHFContest
----------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTEST MANAGER
Call ........... Locator ..............
Section ........... Claimed score ..............
QSO's ........... Correction ..............
Final score ..............
----------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTEST PARTICIPANT
Contest date ............. Call used ........... Locator ............
QTH station ..........................................................
Section : i) single operator .... ii) other ....
Band : 145 MHz
First operator: Name ............................... Call ............
Address ..............................................................
Other operators ......................................................
......................................................................
Station : TX ................................ Output power ......... W
RX .........................................................
Antenna ........................... Height asl ........... m
Claimed score ................ Best DX ................
Number of contacts ................ Countries ..............
DECLARATION
I hereby certify that this station was operated within the rules and spirit of the contest and within the terms of the license.
Date ...………............ Signed ....................…...............
(first operator)
