RSGB AFS Data Contest 2025

The HF data contesting season begins with perhaps the biggest event in the calendar, the Affiliated Societies Contest. It is an opportunity to put to good use the skills learned during the rest of the year through the 80m Club Contest and 80m Autumn Series contests. The formats for those contest were designed to help hone ones station ready for this, the big event. The soap box comments reveal the usual frustrations, moans of lack of preparation and the odd humorous comments as well (much appreciated as an adjudicator).

I said this last year and it must be repeated once more.

As is usual in such a competitive contest, entrants get a little frustrated as well as excited and forget that data modes especially if AFSK is used requires careful attention to the audio quality being fed to the transceiver. The SDR recording highlights a number of stations with signal that were clearly overdriven and difficult to decode. Entrants forget that the use of a speech compressor is actually detrimental to their performance just as much as failing to pay attention to the ALC section of the rig's meter. Failures such as these not only harm the entrant's entry but also those around them. Our bands are small and crowded enough without someone taking up rather more than necessary.

As always it is gratifying that so many of our neighbours participate in the contest adding spice to the otherwise home based affair. Lovely to see so many Non-UK logs submitted.

So to the results

Starting with the Local Clubs section with 40 club teams being represented this year, Norfolk ARC's A team were beaten back to 2nd place as Gloucester AR&ES A team topped the podium in 1st place, just three points separated them. Cambs-Hams were pushed down one place into 3rd place.

In the General Clubs section we find a repeat of last year's result with Three A's CG in 1st place,  The De Montfort University ARS A team in 2nd place and  Addiscombe ARC's A team in 3rd place. This means the AFS Club Data Challenge Trophy is awarded once again to Three A's CG.

Turning to the individual tables we see wins for G4PIQ In the 1000W section, G4ENZ in the 100W section, and G3SWC in the 10W QRP section. We also had 27 Non-UK entrants and topping the list there is PC4H. G4PIQ once again lifts the AFS Data Challenge Trophy for the highest placed entrant.

That concluded the report for this contest and may I extend my congratulations to all our winners. The next HF Data contest is on the 12th February when the 80m CC season gets underway. The perfect opportunity to work out those wrinkles that AFS threw at you.

73 Simone Wilson

80m Data Adjudicator

Results updated.

A query lodged has resulted in a change to the individual positions table, Prior to this update M2A and M7W were joint third. The change has resulted in M7W beating M2A by one point.