Hi,

I hope you are looking forward to taking part in this year’s Commonwealth Contest. As you know, the Contest is no longer an “RSGB” Contest but has shared ownership. Perhaps a few UK stations who are not RSGB members will enter this year?

We are hoping for more Commonwealth participation, so look out for VU and AP stations who may not have taken part before. Don’t expect everyone taking part to understand what “Beru” means either, with the focus being more on Commonwealth.  Nobody will be penalised for calling CQ BERU, except possibly by natural selection. I will be calling TEST CC with G6XX, so you can look out for that. I will happily QSY to bands that you haven’t yet worked me on, but not in the first few hours.

Vic G4BYG has contacted me with a question about self-spotting. Although this was discussed on the “Evans” committee, it was not agreed that the contest should permit self-spotting this year. RBN spots should be good however, so assisted stations (me included this year) should have plenty of spots for guidance. Do be careful though, as often you will be able to work stations who are not spotted – best to slowly tune across each band to see who is calling, not just rely on spots.

We have had some health issues among the UK HQ activators so we are not certain who will be QRV yet but we should have five stations. From the UK you can work the UK HQ stations on each of the five contest bands for QSO points (5 points for same continent) and bonus points (20 points for each QSO).

If you haven’t found the new Commonwealth Contest page on the RSGB website you can get to it here plus there is lots of Commonwealth Contest news on Bob G3PJT’s site here.

For Commonwealth website promotion, you might like to look through the following…

Canadian Commonwealth Contest news is at https://www.rac.ca/commonwealth/.

New Zealand Commonwealth Contest news is at https://nzart.org.nz/event/commonwealth-contest/.

India Commonwealth Contest news is at https://arsi.info/commonwealth-contest/.

Australia Commonwealth Contest news is at https://www.wia.org.au/members/contests/commonwealthcontest/.

I will see you all on Saturday/Sunday.

Kind Regards,

Nick Totterdell G4FAL,

RSGB HF Contest Committee Chair

Bob:

Please publish this on your BERU blog.

For the first time, the station at the RAC office will be on for the CC:  VE3RHQ will be operated by Mike VE3FFK.

VA3RAC will be activated by Dave VE3KG.

VA2RAC and VE7RAC will be active, and possibly other Canadian HQ stations.  

73,

Dave VE3KG

Hi Bob.

I will be operating VA2RAC  HQ  this weekend.

I will be updating the N1MM call history file until friday.

73

Claude  (DUB)  VE2FK

Hello UK HF Contesters

Commonwealth Contest  8th-9th March 2025    see  https://www.rsgbcc.org/hf/rules/2025/rcwc.shtml

I am pleased to be activating the Bonus station GB5CC again this year.

From here on the East Coast of Scotland, 25 miles N. of Inverness, it is (usually but not always) easy for me to work the whole of the UK on all 5 bands.

GB5CC will be calling ‘CQ CC’ – trying my absolute best not to send ‘CQ Bxxx’    🙂

There will be many other Bonus stations for you to work.   Hope to work you in 2 weeks time…..

73     Chris      GM3WOJ / GB5CC