ARCHIVE: Australian Ham Radio Discussion Forum ( AHRDF )

Australia Day Contest

Now a reminder that the NEW Australia Day Contest is taking place this Wednesday 26th of January 2022.

The rules are generally derived from the RD.

This is a trial contest so the contest committee are keen to hear from the contesting community for suggestions on how to improve it for 2023..

Australia Day, January 26th every year 22:00 UTC 25th January to 1000 UTC 26th January.  (eg 9.00AM EADST - 9.00PM EADST, 8.00AM - 8.00PM Qld Time (EAST))
(Gives all VK call areas a full 12 hours of AX prefix use at the same time.)

Emailed Logs are to be received by the contest manager no later than midnight on the 31st of January after the contest ends.

Full details and rules are available on the WIA web site :
https://www.wia.org.au/members/contests/australiaday/

{ Comments seen elsewhere indicate that there could be a similar contest held Anzac Day holiday - another time we can use AX prefixes - To Be Confirmed !!
AND - it is possible/likely that it will be open to DX QSOs in future events  ( VK4ADC) }

Well I am all set to use the AX prefix in the inaugural Aussie Day contest tomorrow, expecting to start at 0800 VK4-time (2200UTC for others) and operating on HF / 6M / 2M / 70CM voice mode only (ie SSB and FM), Single Operator. Not sure how many hours or repeat-blocks I will be around for or what bands will be in use at any time, but I will be there somewhere.

How many inaugural contests have you operated in ?  None - here is your chance to change that !

Doug VK-AX-4ADC

The inaugural Aussie Day Contest has come and gone and now it is time to get those electronic logs in - before the 31st January closing date - so just a few days to get that done.

My log's soapbox comments : Interesting enough but lots of people did not know about it as an inaugural event - or the rules. These things needs lots of PR to make them work. Propagation good at times, poor other times, and not enough stations to work. Storm QRN did not help. VHF operation almost non existent.

There was no real international DX heard so maybe it was the daytime effect, or just general propagation, but whether DX is added to the contest would have been irrelevant this time around.

I worked a few stations on 50.150 (including one ZL1) but none on 144.150 so VHF activity wasn't really there in SE Qld.

There was a bit of early confusion about the AX prefix rules.  Section 8 of the General Rules was interpreted that you could not use the AX prefix in a contest at all...  
"8. 2x1 contest callsigns are prohibited from using the AX prefix in lieu of VK." - and there were quite a lot of 2X1 calls heard/worked - and everyone was abiding by this rule.

I worked the first 9 hours of the 12 hours and then gave up because the voice box was suffering, along with the posterior from sitting for so long....

The same sort of rules appear to be likely for a similar even for Anzac Day, another time we can use the AX prefix, so let's hope for better promulgation beforehand.

Doug, AX4ADC for the day yesterday

I found (what I will call interim) 2022 Australia Day Contest results this morning :
  https://www.vklogchecker.com/Contests/Re...e44e4eb4a4

These may not be final until an official announcement is made but it does provide an indication of who did what !

A pity the Aus Day Contest is not compatible with the Ross Hull like the VHF/UHF Field Day is. The Aus Day Contest, according to my understanding, requires a sig report then number of years licensed instead of a sequential serial number. As the 2 run concurrently it would be nice to enter both without one detracting from the other (in time taken) - especially for those of us who mainly use bands above 50 MHz. Is there a way around this? 73, Peter