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.
This is an international contest and ATV operators in all countries in IARU region 1 enter and a table of results is produced showing a lkeague table of entries based on bands used and number of entries from each country.
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.
You can get on air for an hour on Sunday morning or go out camping on the local hill top for the whole weekend!
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 (and to ask for new codes from any station that you have worked before).
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 can automatically generate a different set of numbers for each band, but you need to set the numbers before the Contest. The default Portsdown numbers are not valid for contest use; full details of how to set them are here:
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 the serial number from 001 for each band; if you are unsuccessful in receiving pictures, you should send back a report such as P0003. This ensures that your attempt at a contact appears in the log.
How do I know other people are on the air?
The easiest way to co-ordinate and set up contacts is by calling / listening on 144.750MHz FM.
Most stations will also submit proposed activity plans on the BATC forum - the 2018 plans are here: https://forum.batc.org.uk/viewtopic.php?f=75&t=5427
DXSpot.TV https://www.dxspot.tv/ was set up to co-ordinate ATV contacts and have a real time chat room where you can message other ATV operators directly - we suggest you register for an account before the contest.
You can access the DXSpot.TV chat room over low bandwidth (2G?) links by initially logging in to DXSpot.TV here https://www.dxspot.tv/ (to get the login cookie) and then using this URL for the chat room only:
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.
Submitting an entry
While the important thing is that you get "on the air" at sometime over the weekend, it would be great if you also took the time to submit an entry, even if it is only for a single 5KM QSO across town using the 5665MHz drone equipment you just got working! That way we can show to Ofcom and other users that there is real activity on the ATV bands and also so the UK can have highest number of entries in the contest!
To submit an entry....
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