5.1 Introduction

IARU Region 1 has organised official international contests on the VHF/UHF/Microwaves bands since 1956, when an all-band contest during the first weekend of September was established. In 1962 a separate UHF/Microwaves contest was added, which was initially held during the last weekend of May (decision Turin, 1961). From 1970 onwards this date was set at the first weekend of October (Brussels, 1969). The millimetre group was introduced during the meeting of the VHF Working group in Vienna, March1986, with the aim of promoting the use of these Amateur Service bands. In October 1987 this extended rule was applied for the first time.

As of 1970 an SWL contest was established, to be run concurrently with the official Region 1 VHF and UHF/Microwaves contests. The conference in DAVOS (2005) decided to discontinue the Region 1 VHF/UHF/Microwaves SWL contest.
During the IARU Region 1 Conference in Scheveningen (1972) it was decided that as of 1973 the September contest would only be held on 145 MHz.
At the IARU Region 1 Conference in Noordwijkerhout (1987) an IARU Region 1 ATV contest was added, to be held during the second weekend of September.
Finally, at the IARU Region 1 Conference in De Haan (1993) an official 50 MHz contest was established, to be held as from 1994 during the first weekend of June. In San Marino 2002 the date was changed into the third weekend of June.

Hence, currently four official IARU Region 1 contests are organised annually:

• The 50 MHz and 70 MHz (Varna 2014) contest during the third weekend of June.
• The VHF contest during the first weekend of September - only on 145 MHz;
• The UHF/Microwaves contest during the first weekend of October on 435 MHz and higher bands;
• The ATV contest during the second weekend of June;

Member societies of IARU Region 1 organise and judge the results of the above contests. The procedures for the organisation of the 50MHz, 145MHz and UHF/Microwaves contests are set out in chapter 5.2. The list of the organizing societies can be found in Annex 1
The IARU Region 1 ATV contest is organized and judged by a member society in a country where ATV transmissions are authorized.
The rules for the official Region 1 contests are set out in chapter 5.3 (50MHz, 145MHz, UHF, Microwaves), and 5.4 (ATV).
Attention is drawn to the fact that since 1974 during the first weekend of November the Italian member society ARI organises the Marconi-Memorial Telegraphy contest as an international contest for the whole of Region 1. This contest, run according to the rules of the official Region 1 contests, is judged by the ARI VHF Committee, and the results are distributed to all participating countries via the VHF Managers of the member societies. This ARI contest replaces the former IARU Region 1 Telegraphy contest.
It is recommended that the national and sub-regional activity contests rules should be complementary and that those contests should be open to all (National and International contesters) to encourage and promote activity on the VHF, UHF and SHF bands.
In order to avoid confusion and improve efficiency,the submission of contest entries shall be no later than the second Monday after the contest, which is in accordance with the rules approved by IARU Region 1. (Varna 2014)

5.2 PROCEDURE FOR ORGANISING IARU REGION 1 50MHz / 70 MHz / 145MHz / UHF/ MICROWAVE CONTESTS

5.2.1 Information

In January of each year the Chairman of the VHF/UHF/Microwaves Committee shall send a letter to the societies organising the IARU Region 1 VHF, UHF/Microwaves, 50/70 MHz and ATV contests in that year, containing an up-to-date copy of the rules for these contests.

5.2.2 Organisation

The IARU-R1 contest robot will be used for contest evaluation for all CW/phone contests. The contest robot is not used for ATV contests. (Vienna 2016)

The logs should be submitted either to:
a. National robot or VHF Manager or to the properly nominated Contest Committee
b. Uploaded directly to IARU R1 contest robot in case there is no national possibility (method a.
above).
The final evaluation is the responsibility of the organizing society. (Varna 2014)

5.2.3 Timing

a. The VHF Manager or the properly nominated Contest Committee should upload the logs to the IARU R1 robot no later than second Sunday after the contest.
b. Preliminary cross checked results shall be published not later than third Sunday after the contest.
c. Not later than the fifth Sunday after the contest the national VHF Manager or properly nominated Contest Committee shall validate the entrants of their own society.
d. Stations operating temporarily outside their “home-country” are for the purpose of the contest participating as stations in the country where theyoperate.
e. The organising society will publish the final results not later than fourteenth Sunday after the contest on IARU R1 robot web site.
The list of results should include at least the following data: call sign, Locator, score, number of QSOs, number of deleted QSOs, percentage of deleted points, ODX call sign, ODX Locator and ODX QRB.
Number of unique QSOs for every contest entrant should be included in the published contest results.
f. These results shall also be published in electronic format at least on the IARU R1 web page.
g. The entrants scoring highest in each section will be awarded the IARU REGION 1 AWARD.
The organising society will receive the certificates from the chairman of the C5 committee (signed by the R1 secretary) and will send those after having filled in the relevant data and after signature to the winners in each section.
Certificates for all participants will be provided by mail directly from the contest robot. (Varna 2014)
h. The DARC will host the ceremony during the yearly HAM radio in Friedrichshafen for the first 3 stations in each category. The prices will be sponsored by the organizing society. (Vienna 16)
You can find a detailed flow chart of the procedurein Annex 2 of the handbook IARU Region 1 page 60/144 Version 7.51 VHF managers handbook May 2016

5.3 RULES IARU R1 50/70 MHz - 145 MHz and UHF/MICROWAVES CONTESTS

5.3.1 Eligible entrants

All licensed radio amateurs in Region 1 may participate in the contest. Multiple operator entries will be
accepted, provided only one callsign per band is used during the contest. When such stations use a different call sign on each band, the logs of that Multi-operator entry shall for each band clearly bear an indication of the group. This will preferably beone of the call signs used, but a group name may be used instead. All stations belonging to such a group shall operate from the same location (see section 5.3.3.). A Station operated by more than one operator and using the same call sign on different frequency bands is eligible for MULTI section only.(Varna 2014)
The contestants must operate within the letter and spirit of the contest and at no greater power than permitted in the ordinary licenses of their country. Stations operating under special high power licenses do so "hors concours" and cannot be placedin the contest proper.

5.3.2 Contest sections

The contests shall comprise the following sections for each band from 50 MHz to 10 GHz and for the
Millimetre group (the combined group of amateur bands above 10 GHz):

• Section SINGLE: stations operated by a single operator, with no operational assistance of another person during the contest.
• Section MULTI: stations operated by multiple operators
• Section 6 HOURS SINGLE: stations operated by a single operator, with no operational assistance of another person during the contest (144 MHz and 432 MHz only).
• Section 6 HOURS MULTI: stations operated by a multiple operators (144 MHz and 432 MHz only).
• Section SINGLE without MGM: stations operated by a single operator, with no operational assistance of another person during the contest (50MHz and 70 MHz only).
• Section SINGLE with MGM: stations operated by a single operator, with no operational assistance of another person during the contest on (50 MHz and 70 MHz only).
• Section MULTI without MGM: stations operated by a multiple operators (50 MHz and 70 MHz only).
• Section MULTI with MGM: stations operated by a multiple operators (50 MHz and 70 MHz only).

6 HOURS section time rule:
the 6 hour time segment can be divided into maximum two periods. The time of the first QSO sets the start time of the first period. The pause between the two periods must be longer than 2 hours. The first time difference of 2 hours or more between two consecutive QSOs marks the pause segment. Only the QSOs that fall into the combined 6 hour time segment will be counted for points. (Varna 2014)
Participants are welcome to operate longer than 6 hours and in such case they shall send their complete log (the contest robot will automatically extract the 6 hours part from the log, while the rest of the log entries will be used for cross-checking purposes). (Vienna 2016)

5.3.3 Operating

a) No more than one transmitter per band may be in use at any one time.
b) A participating station must operate from the same location throughout the event.
c) All the equipment of the station (transmitters, receivers and antennas, etc) must be located within a single circle of no greater than 500 metres diameter.
OPERATOR may reside outside the station’s area (“remote station”), connected to the station via a “remote control terminal”. In such a case, the Locator for the contest is the Locator of the station’s position. An operator may only operate one single station, regardless if it is locally or remotely operated, during the same event.

Note:
- The rover class has been deleted (Varna 2014)
- The recommendation for using The 144,500 – 144,700 MHz band has been deleted (Varna 2014)



5.3.4 Date of contests

• The 50/70 MHz contest will begin on the third Saturday of June.
• The 145 MHzcontest will start on the first Saturday of September.
• The UHF/Microwavecontest will start on the first Saturday of October.

5.3.5 Duration of contests

The contest will commence at 1400 hours UTC on the Saturday and end at 1400 hours UTC on the
Sunday.

5.3.6 Contacts

Each station may only be worked once per band, whether it is fixed, portable or mobile. If a station is worked again during the same contest on the same band, only one contact may count for points, but any duplicate contacts should be logged without claim for points and clearly marked as duplicates.
Contacts made via active repeaters and EME contactsdo not count for points. Competitors are obliged to follow the common definition for a valid QSO (described in the VHF Managers Handbook – Chapter 7.1). The contest exchange (call, report, QSO number and locator) shall be sent and confirmed on the band where the contact started and only during the QSO.
No attempt should be made during the QSO to obtain any part of the required exchange information via other communication methods such as the Internet chat channel, DX Cluster, talk-back on another amateur band, telephone etc.. Such a secondary method invalidates the contest QSO. Self-spotting (advertising its own frequency) on any other communication means, like DX Cluster, chat rooms, etc. shall not be used during the contest. (Varna 2014)

Acceptable examples when using a secondary method:

• "Shall we make a sked on 144.388?"
• "I have QRM, let's move to 144.218 kHz and start again"
• "Nothing received, please try again" and the QSO starts again
• "Thank you for a nice QSO" - Note: Only after the QSO has completed on the radio!

Unacceptable exampleswhen using a secondary method:

• "I need your serial number"
• "Please repeat all information"
• “Please confirm <report>, <serial number>, <locator> etc.”

5.3.7 Type of emission

Contacts may be made in A1A, J3E or F3E (G3E). MGM mode is allowed during the 50/70 MHz contest.(Varna 2014)

5.3.8 Contest exchanges

Code numbers exchanged during each contact shall consist of the RS, RST or RSQ(MGM mode) report, followed by a serial number commencing with 001 for the first contact on each band and increasing by one for each successive contact on that band. This exchange must immediately be followed by the complete Locator of the sending station (examples: 59003 JO20DB or 579123 IN55CC).
For contact on 50 MHz, outside of Region 1, the locator can be 4 digits and “MM” will be added as 5th
and 6th digit.

Note:
- for the “T” part of the report, see chapter 8.6.1
- for the “Q” part of the report, see chapter 8.6.1

5.3.9 Scoring

For the amateur bands up to 10 GHz inclusive, points will be scored on the basis of one point per kilometre, i.e. the calculated distance in kilometres will be truncated to an integer value and 1 km will be added.
The centre of each locator square is used for distance calculations. In case that only a 4-character locator has been received (50 MHz), the contact is invalid. 
In order to make contest scores comparable, for theconversion from degrees to kilometres a factor of 111.2 should be used when calculating distances with the aid of the spherical geometry equation (Noordwijkerhout, 1987).
All QSOs including unique QSOs shall count for points even if they only appear in the log of one contest entrant (Varna 2014)
For the combined higher bands (Millimetre group) the score will be the sum of the points scored on each of the bands, using the following multiplication factors for the number of kilometres scored on each band:
• 24 GHz 1 x
• 47 GHz 2 x
• 75/80 GHz 3 x
• 122 GHz 4 x
• 134 GHz 8 x
• 245 GHz 10 x

5.3.10 Entries

The entries must be set out in digital/electronic form fulfilling the requirements under rule 5.3.13. Logs shall be sent according to rule 5.2.3 not later than the second Monday following the contest weekend.
Late entries will be accepted as check logs. By submitting the contest or check log, an entrant agrees that he / she has:
• understood the contest rules and agrees to be bound by them,
• operated according to all the rules and regulations that pertain to his and/or station license,
• agreed the cross-checked log may be made open to the public, except for the personal data in
PAdr1, PAdr2, RName, RAdr1, RAdr2, RPoCo, RCity, RCoun, RPhon and RHBBS lines of EDI file format,
• accept all decisions of the organizing society (contest organizer) as final.
 
5.3.11 Judging of entries

The final judging of the entries shall be the responsibility of the organising society, whose decision shall be final. Entrants deliberately contravening any of these rules, attempting fraud or flagrantly disregarding the IARU Region 1 bandplans shall be disqualified.
Each VHF Manager and/or national Contest Committee shall be responsible for monitoring during contests. Additional monitoring stations may be appointed. but these stations may not take part in the contest. The national VHF Manager/Contest Committeeis responsible for disqualification based upon the results of monitoring. The claimed contact shall be disqualified for any error in the information logged by the station.
Any error in the exchanged information logged by a station is liable to result in the loss of all points for that contact, subject to review and confirmation by the contest organiser.

5.3.12 Awards

• Section winners:
Certificates will be issued by the organising society to the winners in the two sections on each band up to 10 GHz and for the Millimetre group.
• Overall winners for UHF/Microwave contest:
For each section an overall winner of the IARU Region 1 UHF/Microwaves contest will be declared. For this competition the scores of the entrants on the following bands will be combined, using an adaptive multiplier system:

- 435 MHz
- 1.3 GHz
- 2.4 GHz
- 5.7 GHz
- 10 GHz
- Millimetre group

The multipliers to be used for the determination of the overall scores in each section are found as follows:
The multiplier is equal to the ratio between the highest number of points scored by any participating station on the 435 MHz band for that section and the highest number of points scored by any participating station on the band for that section for which the multiplier is being determined.
For the millimetre group the scores as determined according to rule 5.3.9 are used for the determination of this group's multiplier.
As the 3.4 GHz band is not yet available in all countries within Region 1, the 3.4 GHz results will not be taken into account when determining the overall winners of the sections in the October IARU Region 1 UHF/Microwaves contest (Noordwijkerhout 1987 )

5.3.13 Logs

The logs shall be in the format defined in Section 5.7
Please visit also the IARU Contest robot: iaru.oevsv.at

(Copy from: IARU Region 1 7.51 VHF managers handbook May 2016 )