The 2014 RSGB Affiliated Societies SSB contest delivered on its reputation for being a challenging contest for operators and their equipment. The contest compares well to the larger international events in terms of density of traffic, participants made over 28,000 contacts in 4 hours, that’s around 2 per second, all within 125 kHz of our 80M band. 246 stations submitted logs representing 65 affiliated societies.

Entrants commented that conditions were particularly good for inter-G participants, though those in the North of GM were less fortunate, unable to profit due to the early start when skip is short.

The major comments from entrants focused on the difficulty in working stations due to the number of participants within the allocated band space. Solutions suggested focused mainly on reducing power limits and increasing the frequency allocation for contacts. The AFS SSB contest is a premier event in the RSGB national contest calendar, other events such as the 80M Club Championships offer an opportunity to compete on a smoother playing field. There are those entrants who challenged by such an operating environment will aim to improve and develop their station and skill in order to remain competitive, going on to compete at the International level, the spread of contests in the RSGB contest calendar aim to offer such an opportunity to progress within a national framework. Even so, the topic of reducing the congestion for this event will be raised at the next RSGB Contest Committee meeting, if approved any changes will be reflected in the 2015 calendar and announced via the Contest Committee newsletter.

Congratulations to the winning team, Three As CG(West)  (G3BJ, GW4BLE, GW0GEI and G8DX) who receive the Flight Refuelling ARS Trophy. Congratulations to G4PIQ who as the leading station receives the RSGB Lichfield Trophy.

Mark, G4MEM

RSGB CC Adjudicator