Activity on the 2-metre band this coming weekend 18th / 19th May 2024

Activity on the 2-metre band this coming weekend 18th / 19th May 2024

Two Amateur Radio contests are happening this weekend on the 2-metre 144MHz band.

The first one is the RSGB May starting at 1400 UTC on Saturday and ending at 1400 UTC on Sunday. There are five sections which you can enter under and three power levels.

For me I will be operating in the 6 hours Single Op Fixed (6S) section using the QRP Power of 10 watts doing 3 hours on Saturday and 3 on Sunday.

On Sunday there is also the first Backpackers contest on 144MHz this runs from 1100 utc to 15:00 utc. So there is some overlap with the above contest. The contest does have two sections Backpacker and Hill Toppers

I do like the UK VHF contest they are more gentlemanly than the HF contests and you get real signal reports, not everything is 59.

You will be asked to give a two-character postcode, this caused me a problem when I first entered as Sheffield from a Royal Mail point of view, is S, however, in these contests it is SD – please don’t ask me why, as I do not have a clue.

A full list of the postcodes used in the contest is https://www.rsgbcc.org/vhf/rules/2024/postcode.shtml

For more information please see https://www.rsgbcc.org/vhf/

If you have any questions please feel free to ask.

If you are not sure about entering or having a go, there is a useful section on the RSGB website. It is  called “How to enter a VHF contest” This can be found at https://www.rsgbcc.org/vhf/howto.shtml 

Let’s see if we can boost the activity on the 2-metre band this weekend and have some fun doing it.

And Enjoy your weekend whatever you do!