Contest Managers Report for
December 2010 & January-2011

It would seem that my Break-In Contests column for the November/December issue never made it in to print, which is a pity, but never to mind some of it will keep until the next issue.

However some of what I wrote pertains to the next couple of weekends, so here it is:

The last international contest of 2010 and the first of 2011, are both little known, brief, but interesting contests with unique contact exchanges.

26th December 0000 - 1200UTC

The RAEM Contest (CW-only) is unique insomuch as the exchange is your latitude and longitude, sent in this format; 39S174O, where ‘O’ is the acronym for ‘Ost’, the German word for East. Scoring is based on distance between stations and most contest logging programmes will take care of the scoring, or just send in your log with no claimed score and it will be scored for you. Full info at

http://raem.qrz.ru/contest/raem_2010/rules_eng_2010.php

1st January 0800 - 1100UTC

The Happy New Year (HNY) Contest is run the Scandinavian SARTG people, it's RTTY only and 40m/80m only. The unique exchange includes "happy new year" in your native language. Full info at:

http://www.sartg.com

So there you have them, a serious fun contest and a definitely not serious fun contest, what better ways to finish one year and start another !

The first major international contest of 2011 is of course the ARRL RTTY Contest, January 8th 1800UTC - January 9th 2400UTC. Full info at:

http://www.arrl.org/rtty-roundup

On a personal note: I've been absent from HF bands since mid-November. Main reason being a wee health matter, which is just about fixed, but also recently had family from ZL and US visiting, plus my HF rotator needs some minor maintenance and so does one of the traps on the tribander! I've missed some good contests, which I'm not happy about. Anyway, hope to fix the rotator and tribander in the next couple of days so I can operate in the RAEM. Then on 29th Dec, I'm leading 45 Scouts and leaders to the Scout Jamboree and if I survive will arrive back home the day before the ARRL RTTY contest.

Seasons Greetings and GL in all the 2011 contests,

Frank, ZL2BR ZM2B