RSGB Commonwealth Contest Rules

The Commonwealth Contest promotes contacts between stations in the Commonwealth and Mandated Territories. A more relaxed contest environment gives the opportunity to work some choice DX.

A vast amount of background information, statistics and photographs related to the Commonwealth Contest may be found on G3PJT’s https://berucontest.wordpress.com website.

PLEASE NOTE:

Contest Call Signs may be used by UK entrants holding a valid NoV -- see Rule 2(b).

Contest preferred segments must be complied with (see Rule 1).

The team size in the Team Competition is five, with notification of members' callsigns required (see Rule 6).

Entrants in the Team Competition may now be multi-operator as well as single-operator (see Rule 7).

1. Basic Information

Entrants must comply with RSGB HF General Rules

Date: 14-15 March 2015. The 2nd full weekend of March in each year.

Time: 10:00 - 10:00UTC

Bands: 3.5, 7, 14, 21, 28MHz. Activity is normally concentrated in the lower 30kHz of each band. However, entrants must observe band-plans and contest-preferred segments, so no operation must take place below 3510kHz or above 14060kHz.

Mode: CW

Exchange: RST plus serial number. HQ stations will additionally send HQ, which must be logged

2. Eligible entrants

(a) Land-based stations outside the UK within the Commonwealth or British Mandated Territories (as defined by the RSGB call-area list). Remote operation is permitted, but in addition to the requirements of the General Rules , the operator must be within the same Commonwealth Call Area as the other elements of the station.

(b) UK entrants, who must be members of the RSGB. Entrants who hold a valid NoV from OFCOM may use Contest Call Signs (SCC) in this contest. The UK HQ station is specifically permitted to use a special callsign. Otherwise, the use of prefixes which do not indicate the entrant's country (DXCC Entity), such as GB, is not recommended. UK entrants in the Open and Restricted Sections will have their scores entered automatically into the HF Championship.

3. Sections

(a) Open - Single Operator Unassisted
24 hour operation - full legal limit on power - no antenna restrictions.
OR
12 hour operation - full legal limit on power - no antenna restrictions. 

(b) Restricted - Single Operator Unassisted
24 hour operation - output power limited to 100 watts - antenna restricted to single element.
OR
12 hour operation - output power limited to 100 watts - antenna restricted to single element. 

(c) Open - Single Operator Assisted
24 hour operation - full legal limit on power - no antenna restrictions.
OR
12 hour operation - full legal limit on power - no antenna restrictions. 

(d) Restricted - Single Operator Assisted
24 hour operation - output power limited to 100 watts - antenna restricted to single element.
OR
12 hour operation - output power limited to 100 watts - antenna restricted to single element. 

For stations in the 12-hour categories, off periods must be clearly defined in the Soapbox field of the Cabrillo file and a minimum of 60 minutes in length. However, time before the first contact, and after the final contact, may be of any length. Stations opting to operate for a maximum of 12 hours will be annotated in the results listings.  Unassisted and Assisted stations will also be annotated in the results listings. 

The term “single element” defines each antenna (eg. dipole, vertical, long-wire, etc), and does not preclude the use of different single-element antennas during the contest.

(e) Multi-Operator
24 hour operation - single transmitted signal - full legal limit on power - no antenna restrictions - packet cluster use permitted.

4. Scoring

Contacts may be made with any station using a Commonwealth Call Area prefix, except those within the entrant's own call area. Note that for this contest, the entire UK counts as one call area, and therefore UK stations may not contact each other except as specified in Rule 5. Each contact scores 5 points with a bonus of 20 points for each of the first three contacts with each Commonwealth Call Area on each band.

5. Headquarters stations

A number of Commonwealth Society HQ stations will be active during the contest and will send HQ after their serial number, to identify themselves. Only one HQ station is permitted per Commonwealth Call Area. Each HQ station counts as an additional call area, and entrants may contact any HQ station (including one in their own call area) for points and bonuses, the annotation HQ being made in the log where appropriate. Note: GB5CC (the UK HQ station) is the only UK station which can be worked by other UK stations.

6. Team Competition

(a) Each team will consist of up to five stations. In addition to Australia, Canada, Great Britain, New Zealand and Rest of the Commonwealth teams, any Commonwealth country or geographical region may enter one or more teams. An individual station may represent only one team, and may compete in the Open, Restricted or Multi-operator Section. Each station's log must be submitted in the normal way.
(b) Each team will have a captain who must submit a list of callsigns of team members to commonwealth.contest@rsgbcc.org no later than seven days before the start of the contest. Substitutions may be accepted up to the start of the contest.
(c) Stations in the Rest of the Commonwealth team(s) may only be drawn from countries not submitting their own team.


7. Team Scoring

(a) The team score is the sum of individual adjudicated scores, with all stations located in the southern hemisphere or on the equator having their final score multiplied by a “latitude factor”.
(b) The “latitude factor” will be re-calculated each year based on published scores: for each hemisphere, the highest-scoring team total for each of the last three years will be used to give an overall total and the factor will be calculated as the ratio of the northern to the southern grand totals rounded down to the nearest two decimal places.
(c) Each team member is competing as a single-operator or multi-operator within the overall contest. No passing of information between team members during the event is permitted, except that team members may contact each other for points and/or bonuses where the contest rules allow.

8. Logs

Each entry must indicate the section entered, with the full postal address of the entrant. Electronic logs must be submitted in Cabrillo format to http://www.rsgbcc.org/cgi-bin/hfenter.pl  

Information on submitting paper logs is available in the RSGB General Rules

An example of a Commonwealth Contest log in Cabrillo format can be found at -
http://www.rsgbcc.org/hf/formats/BERU.txt

Further information regarding the Cabrillo format can be found at -
http://www.rsgbcc.org/hf/information/cabrillo.shtml

Logs must be received no later than one calendar month after the end of the contest.

10. Awards

(a) Open: The Senior Rose Bowl to the overall leader in the Open Unassisted Section. The Col Thomas Rose Bowl to the highest-placed UK station in the Open Unassisted Section.

(b) Restricted: The Junior Rose Bowl to the leader in the Restricted Unassisted Section.

(c) The John Dunnington Trophy to the highest-placed UK station in the Restricted Unassisted Section who has not won the trophy in the preceding two years.

(d) The Lilliput Cup is awarded to the leading Single Operator Unassisted station running 5W or less. Such stations must identify themselves by CATEGORY: QRP in the Cabrillo header.

(e) The Rosebery Shield is awarded to the leading Single Operator Assisted station.

(f) The Ross Carey Rose Bowl to the highest-placed UK station in the 12-hour Unassisted Section, Open or Restricted.

(g) The VP8GQ Trophy to the highest-placed non-UK station (who has not won the trophy in the preceding two years) in the 12-hour Unassisted Section, Open or Restricted.

(h) A Commonwealth Medal may be awarded to the entrant who in the opinion of the RSGB Contest Committee has most improved their score or contributed to the contest over the years.

(i) Certificates will be awarded to the winners and runners-up in all categories and sections.

(j) A special “Commonwealth Traveller” certificate will be awarded to the highest-scoring entrant in the Open or Restricted sections who operates from a Commonwealth Call Area not represented in the published results of the previous year’s contest. At the discretion of the RSGB Contest Committee, additional “Commonwealth Traveller” certificates may be awarded to entrants from especially inaccessible Call Areas.

(k) A certificate will be awarded to the highest-scoring station using QRP (5 watts or less). Such stations must identify themselves by CATEGORY: QRP in the Cabrillo header. QRP Stations must not add /QRP to their callsign used during the contest.