VKCC Plaque

The 72nd Oceania DX Contest is taking place on the first two full weekends of October, with SSB running from 0800 UTC on Saturday the 4th to 0800 UTC Sunday 5 and then the CW section taking place from 0800 UTC on Saturday the 11th of October to 0800 UTC on Sunday the 12th of October.

All contesting HF bands from 160M to 10M are used during the contest (so no WARC bands are permitted for contest traffic) and there should plenty of opportunity to test your new antenna or see if those elusive sun spots make a long-awaited appearance.

The main aim of the contest is to promote HF contacts with stations in the Oceania region and the yagis of the world will be pointing towards our part of the planet, eager to put your call into their log. It will be a great opportunity to use that shiny new two letter call if you just got one in the
ballot!

A good turn out is hoped for from VK, ZL and YB stations, as well as stations from some of the rarer South Pacific countries. Oceania stations can work other Oceania and non-Oceania stations, but non-Oceania stations can only work
Oceania stations.

To encourage VK participation, the VK Contest Club is sponsoring another plaque this year. The plaque is awarded to the Australian radio club with the greatest number of member stations participating in the Oceania DX Contest.

For each club, the number of participating member stations is equal to the sum of the number of stations in the SSB section and the number of stations in the CW section. In case of a tie between two or more clubs, then the scores of the individual participating stations will be totalled for each club and the plaque will be awarded to the club with the highest total score.

To qualify as a participant, a station must log at least 50 valid Oceania DX Contest contacts during either the SSB or CW sections of the contest. To be eligible for the plaque, a club must submit a minimum number of 5 participant stations - which shouldn't be too hard to organise for the vast majority of VK clubs. Only local clubs in Australia are eligible for this award, so national organizations or clubs like the WIA are not eligible.

There must be at least 3 Clubs competing, for the plaque to be awarded. It'll look great on the club shack wall, so why not get yourselves organised and assemble an entry?

Full details can be found on the VKCC website, at WWW.VKCC.COM

Good Luck and Good DX!

See you on the bands,

Phil Smeaton VK4BAA