HF Phone, Digital and CW Contests in South Africa August 2018

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The aim of the SARL HF Contests is for participants to contact as many amateurs in Southern Africa as possible on the 20, 40 and 80 metre amateur bands.

The Phone contest takes place on Sunday 5 August, the digital contest on Sunday 19 August and the CW contest on Sunday 26 August.
There are several trophies to be won for each contest as well as for overall results.

The SARL HF Phone Contest will be run from 14:00 to 17:00 UTC on Sunday 5 August 2018 with activity between 14 125 to 14 300 kHz; 7 063 to 7 100 and 7 130 to 7 200 kHz and 3 603 to 3 650 and 3 700 to 3 800 kHz. The exchange is a RS report and a consecutive serial number starting at 001.

The Silent Keys Memorial SSB Trophy is awarded to the amateur who achieves the highest score; the Joseph White Trophy is awarded to the amateur who achieves the highest score on any one band and the AKYAB Trophy is awarded to the amateur who achieves the highest score in his or her first year of phone (this amateur must have received his or her licence between 1 September 2017 to August 2018)

Lithuania Wins World RadioSport Team Championship

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Lithuanian amateurs Gedas Lucinskas, LY9A and Mindis Jukna, LY4L, scored nearly 5.7 million points from 5,139 QSOs to win the 2018 World Radiosport Team Championship

The runners-up were Germans Manfred Wolf, DJ5MW and Stefan von Baltz, DL1IAO, who scored nearly 5.3 million points from just under 5,000 QSOs.

In all, the 63 two-person teams made well over a quarter of a million contacts and scored a total of over 250 million points over the 24-hour contest period.

Detailed Report - http://www.wrtc2018.de

Updated CQ World Wide Contest Rules for 2018 Contest Season

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CQ has announced that, effective with 2018 contests, some modifications to the CQ World Wide Contest rules have been developed and approved by the contest committee.

  • The “busted call/NIL” penalty is reduced from 3× to 2×.
  • Email addresses for log submissions have been removed, and the committee now “strongly prefers” using web uploads to submit logs. Paper logs will still be accepted.
  • The 10× penalty for “rubber clocking” with MS/M2 entries has been eliminated, although the committee “will continue to vigorously pursue time abuses.”
  • The observer program has been eliminated. “Given the absence of a reasonable pool of volunteers and supporting funding, the program has proven to be impractical,” CQ said.
  • The top entry in the “Rookie” category will be awarded on a one-time-only basis. Previous Rookie winners are ineligible for plaques in this category.