[UK-CONTEST] 2012 calendar

[Chairman, RSGB Contest Committee]

As you will have seen, the provisional HF and VHF calendars for RSGB 
contests are on the Contest Committee <http://www.rsgbcc.org> web site.  
You would be right to say that this is late for calendars which begin in 
a month, but arises from the fact that the committee holds a 
face-to-face meeting in November.  This leaves little time to finalise 
the subsequent year's calendar, so next year we will meet in September, 
which should improve things.

The start month of the 80m CCs is to be February, not January.  There 
are two reasons for this.  First, clubs have said that there are already 
two "heavyweight" club events on 80m in January (SSB and CW AFS), which 
make it hard to persuade members to participate in the weekday 80m 
events.  The other is that propagation in January is poor, and as we 
learnt at the Convention, the critical frequency in the evenings is 
likely to be below 3MHz.  For those who need more of an RSGB contest fix 
next month, there are six Tuesday evening contests above 30MHz to try.

The Sprint contests have not been universally popular, and have not 
really been fulfilling the same functions as the CCs.  They are hard for 
newcomers to deal with, and those whose CW is shaky can't rely on 
several repetitions of callsigns and serial numbers to work out what 
they are likely to receive when they call themselves.  However, the 
Sprints have a loyal following, and are not going to be abandoned.  The 
discussion in the Contest Committee has been similar to that on the 
reflector, so don't rely on the calendar for dates and times at the 
moment.  But I think it is unlikely we will try multi-mode Sprints, 
given the difficulties many entrants have with the format as it is.

Other changes you will see next year:

The HF and VHF General Rules will be combined into a single version.  
Neither set of rules has been properly updated for many years, so there 
will be some amendments and clarifications.

The rules for all three Field Day contests will be updated, and some 
changes made in various sections.

A prize draw will be added to the Commonwealth Contest 
<http://www.beru.org.uk/2012prizedraw/prizedraw.html>, in celebration of 
its 75th anniversary..

The rules for the IOTA contest will have some modifications, but these 
will be evolutionary, not revolutionary.


73,

Ed Taylor, GW3SQX
Chairman, RSGB Contest Committee