IARU ATV contest
The most important on-air event of the year is the annual IARU ATV Contest which takes place over the second weekend of June each year. The 2018 event is on 10/11 June.
The contest starts at 1 pm UK time on the Saturday and runs through until 7 pm on the Sunday, so there is plenty of time to get on the air.
Who can enter?
Everyone! You can enter from your home station, from a portable location or a club station - and you don't have to be a BATC member to enter.
The rules allow for “roving” stations, so there is no reason why you should not operate from home on one day, and go out portable on another, or even use multiple portable sites. Just remember to use new 4-digit codes from each location.
What do I send and how is the contact confirmed?
The basic aim is to send a 4 digit code and have it successfully received - you'll find that most receiving stations add the 4 numbers to together and tell you the sum as confirmation that they received them.
The numbers in the 4 digit code should not be the same or consecutive: 4752 is OK, but 2345 or 2222 are not and you need to send a different set of numbers on each band you transmit on.
The numbers can be scribbled on a piece of paper or computer generated. The Portsdown system automatically generates a different set of numbers for each band - see here for more details.
Time of contest
The contest rules refer to times in UTC: this is Universal Coordinated Time (the abbreviation comes from the French translation which is internationally accepted). Many of us will know this as Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), which is the clock time in the UK during the winter, but one hour behind in the Summer when we use British Summer Time (BST). This is why the International Contest starts at 1pm and finishes at 7pm for us.
Signal reports
Contest reports use the P scale for reporting ATV signal readability: The P report is followed by a sequential 3 digit serial number for the contact. For example for your first contact on 23 cm you might send the report P4001, and for the second contact P5002. Start from one for each band; if you are unsuccessful in receiving pictures, you can send back a report such as P0003. This ensures that your attempt at a contact appears in the log.
More information
The latest Rules for the International ATV Contest can be downloaded here (.pdf).
The Contest Manager can be contacted on contests@batc.tv