Pierre,
You can take as many breaks as you want, but you can only count two of
those breaks towards your mandatory six hours of off-time. As long as you
have taken either one single off-time of at least six hours, or two chunks
of off-time that between them add up to at least six hours, you will meet
the off-time requirement and you can operate or not as you wish for the
rest of the contest.
Each of these off times must be at least 30 minutes long - that's 30
consecutive clock minutes during which no contacts have been logged. The
Cabrillo file only gives the hours and minutes part of the time (no
seconds), so waiting exactly 30 minutes and no seconds will almost never be
enough. You need to start counting at the beginning of the next minute on
the clock after the last contact and wait until the full 30 minutes has
passed after that before logging the next contact. You can take shorter
breaks, of course, but those short breaks won't count towards the required
six hours.
If you start late by half an hour or more, or stop half an hour or more
before the end of the contest, that can count as one of your two official
off times in order to meet the six hour requirement.
73,
Rich VE3KI
VE3KTB wrote:
I'm a bit perplexed by rule 2.2. Does this mean that once I have stopped
operating twice that I'm done for the contest if I stop again?
...
What happens if I start the contest some hours late? Is that considered
one of the off periods?
And, what would be the minimum time between contacts to count as off-time?
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