Contesting is not for everyone but if you do have an interest in finding out more about it and what NARC is doing please read on!

NARC wants to encourage all members to have a go at contesting. No experience is needed to get started and every point is worth earning! As you take part, experience will be gained and performance improves. It’s a great personal challenge and can be very enjoyable. Other benefits include getting your callsign ‘out there’, so you are more widely recognised by hams both at home and abroad and you find people will actively search you out for a chat outside the contests. You also find an urge to improve your station and operating technique will develop.

Contests are to be found on all the non-WARC HF bands and all VHF and up bands.

There is a regular calendar of contests on the RSGBCC site – link here – or more widely on WA7BNM’s website – link here. Of course you can also find more information each week in hte NARC contest news sheet on the NARC Website or in the weekly newsletter.

NARC favours N1MM+ as a contest logging program. This has the advantage of being updated regularly, many pre set-up contests are included or addable and it links to your rig with many features designed to help operation. Link here to N1MM+ download.

Of course there are other well respected logging programs such as Log4om, Logger32 and WinTest.

Help is available from any of the regular contesters who can usually be found on 145.450MHz at almost any time or on the Contest net at 9pm on Fridays on 145.250MHz.

After major HF contests a net for the participants runs on 145.250 to exchange scores and chat about conditions etc.

HF Contesting

On HF, NARC enters the CC series of 80m RSGB contests from February to July each year with contests on CW, DATA (PSK63 and RTTY) and SSB see the RSGBCC site for details and rules. We have usually won this contest in recent years!

We also enter the Autumn series of 80m RSGB contests with a similar result.

NARC also usually enters HF CW field day and occasionally SSB field day, (we also have a team in the 50MHZ Six Meter club contest at the same time as CW field day).

We are taking an active role in the AFS series of club championships run by RSGB – these include both HF (40m and 80m) contests and VHF contests too. See RSGB site for information.

NARC members have also been active in the IARU HF championship (link here) and the associated GR2HQ challenge run by RSGB and have run the headquarters station coming second worldwide in 2024.

NARC members are also active in IOTA contest (Islands on the air) with several travelling to Shetland this year. See RSGBCC for details.

We are also looking to put an entry in for CQWW RTTY at the end of September.

WRTC (World Radiosport Team Championships) are being held in East Anglia in 2026 with the best teams from all over the world being hosted in our area. NARC is sponsoring a site and NARC members are active in organising this event. See WRTC site (link here) or elsewhere on NARC website for further information.

VHF Contesting

Our NARC contest team enjoyed a couple of successful years working from a site in Trimingham as G2N, winning one contest and coming second in two others.

The team is currently in a hiatus and working on which contests to do and from where, as the Trimingham site now has a new non-NARC team doing the major VHF contests. NARC members may join them for these tests or alternatively can help to develop the NARC team once again.

NARC takes an active role in the RSGB UKAC series of contests (see RSGBCC) on all VHF and UHF bands up to 1.3GHZ with one member also taking part on 2.3 GHz and 10GHz and shortly also to include 5GHz. We came 4th overall in the UKACs last year. This series runs throughout the year. To be competitive you don’t need a big station, people do enter with a simple colinear vertical, ideally start with a simple yagi and at least 10 watts although generally the bigger and higher the antenna the better! Most contacts are on USB although CW and some non-FT digital modes are also used by some contestants. These contests provide experience in both contesting skills and use of various propogation modes such as troposcatter, ES and aircraft scatter. The UKAC series generally run alongside other European contests which increases contact opportunities abroad.

Big VHF contests run alongside European contests include the Trophy series of contests and can be entered either as a large team effort for a full 24h or as a smaller 6h effort as a team or single operator.

There are many other VHF and up contests to participate in either personally or on behalf of the club a perusal of the RSGBCC VHF site will give more information. Link here.

N1MM Makro’s

There is nothing fancy about most of the RTTY macro files that I uploaded, but perhaps a little explanation about them would be helpful.

1. I operate both Run and S&P methods, and define functions keys for both operating modes.

2. I operate ESM (Enter Sends Message), so my macros conform to the default function keys that would be sent when pressing [Enter].

3. I usually work dupes as it is quicker than arguing the toss. so some macros don’t define a macro key as “Worked B4”.

4. I rely upon macro substitution characters as much as possible, so you will see things like:   –

{mycall} instead of G3LDI

{SENTRST} instead of 599   – {EXCH} instead of some fixed string

—————————————————————————————–

GENERIC MACRO FILE
You will notice a file called GENERIC RTTY.MC in the gallery. When operating a new contest, it is easy to open the GERENIC file, modify it as necessary for that particluar contest, then save the macro file with a contest-specific title.

MACRO SUB-DIRECTORY

After several years of operating RTTY and CW contests, I developed a large collection of Macro files. To avoid confusion in the N1MM root directory, I created a sub-directory under \N1MM called \Macros. I keep all of my macro files there.

I hope you find this helpful. If you have any queries, give either Malcolm or myself a call on the Contest Net, which is Friday evenings at 2000 local on 145.250.

RSGB 80MCC

Frequencies:  PSK on 3580 – 3585 USB,  set dial freq to 3580 but also move to 3582.5 to cover whole of band.  Note that most people have gone over to psk 63 but there may still be a few stations using psk31.  Be ready to switch between if necessary and in particular if conditions are such that there is a lot of phase distortion which will impact psk63 first.

RTTY,  do not go below 3585 and the band goes up to 3620 but most people tend to stop at 3600 in line with the traditional band limit, and you may run into SSB qrm above 3600, but take a look up there as there could be people operating in the 3600 – 3620 sector.  Note for those operating RTTY with AFSK the mode is LSB

PSK/RTTY split:   In order to maximise your overall score it is best to try to balance up the number of contacts in each mode if possible.  Usually done by operating about three quarters of an hour in each mode as you see best.

Mode:  Make sure that you set the mode in the contest set up window to ‘Mixed’ so that when you work the same station again on the other mode your program will not show it as a ‘dupe’, only if you try to work them for a third time.    You can work any station once per mode.

Log:  when checking your Cabrillo log at the end ensure that all PSK contacts are marked  as PS and RTTY ones RY.

Call signs:  It is sometimes confusing as to the station you are working in Data modes so try to be sure as far as you can but problems do occur where someone calls you thinking that you are the station you just worked and such similar things.

Checks:  Check out you systems as early as possible before 8pm.