Have you ever wanted to learn about contesting but didn’t know where to start? Did you ever want to learn the secrets of how the big stations earn their scores? Well now is your chance!AREG hosted a special event immediately prior to the WIA AGM in Adelaide on May the 19th 2017. The “Australian Contesting Technical College” was presented by Trent Sampson VK4TS.

Trent Sampson VK4TS is the Contest Columnist for AR magazine and a member of the Lambda Contest Group who operate under the Callsign VK4KW and holds many records in Multi Operator categories in SSB RTTY and CW.

During the 2 hour session, Trent will discussed setting up a modern contest station for SO2R (SIngle Operator 2 Radios) operation as well as Multi operator station considerations, including equipment selection, interfacing, and antenna selection.

Antenna selection covered real life appraisals of contest locations  and how well it worked using High-Frequency Terrain propagation analysis.

When considering software, Trent discussed examples of how to use the most popular software and the lessons learned from it.

Topics Covered included:

• Multi Operator Stations,
• SO2R Operation
• Filtering; Bandpass and Coax Stub,
• Antenna selection Software usage,
• N1MM with examples of SSB RTTY and CW.

Copies of the slide pack can be accessed (here).