RAC Canada Winter Contest 2020 now includes a “Rookie Plaque”

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Brice Atchison, who shares the following announcement from the RAC:

RAC Canada Winter Contest 2020:
Contest Period: 0000 UTC to 2359 UTC December 19, 2020.
New “Rookie” Subcategory and Sponsors for the RAC Contests
https://www.rac.ca/rac-canada-winter-contest-2020/

For immediate release:

In December each year, Radio Amateurs of Canada sponsors the RAC Canada Winter Contest. Amateurs all over the world are invited to participate.

The global pandemic will most likely still be a fact of life on Saturday, December 19 when the RAC Canada Winter Contest takes place and we want to make sure that everyone participates safely. The RAC Contest Committee is therefore asking all participants to follow the guidelines provided by the government and health officials in your respective area for any of the multi-op categories enabled within the contest. If you do carry out an operation in any of the multi-op categories, please advise as part of your log submission that you have followed your locally applicable guidelines for group sizes and social (physical) distancing.

New “Rookie Plaque”

Radio Amateurs of Canada is pleased to announce the creation of a new “Rookie” subcategory for both the RAC Canada Day Contest and the RAC Canada Winter Contest.

The new “Rookie Plaque” will be sponsored by RadioSport Manitoba and the Winnipeg Amateur Radio Club and will begin with this year’s RAC Canada Winter Contest which will be held on Saturday, December 19.

“Rookie” is defined as a single operator who was first licensed as a Radio Amateur less than 36 calendar months (three years) before the date of the contest being entered in this subcategory. Any level of Amateur Radio licence available from the licensing jurisdiction qualifies for the subcategory.

The participating licensed Amateur is required to self-declare their eligibility, but the RAC Contest Management Committee reserves the right to request proof of eligibility to assist in resolving any disputes.

Eligible Categories for the Rookie Plaque:

Participants are eligible for the new Rookie Plaque in the following categories. Note: only one plaque is available across the three categories designated below.

Single Operator All Band Low Power (SOABLP)
Single Operator All Band High Power (SOABHP)
Single Operator All Band QRP Power (SOABQRP)

Qualification for the Rookie Overlay Category:

Any Single Operator All Band entrant, in the categories noted above, who meets the Rookie requirements will need to select or enter the Rookie category by adding a new “Category-Overlay: Rookie line” in the Cabrillo log file header. You may need to manually enter this line if the logging software you use does not support this category overlay.

In addition, entrants will need to indicate the date they were first licensed by adding a comment with that information in a “Soapbox:” field in the Cabrillo header. An example would be: “Soapbox: First licensed in January of 2019.”

Rookie participants will still qualify for the plaques in the three eligible categories should they receive the highest score in one of those categories. Previous rookie winners are ineligible for an additional Rookie Plaque in future contests.

RAC Cabrillo Guidelines:

As indicated above, as part of the contest rules update around the new Rookie subcategory we have updated the RAC Contest Cabrillo Guidelines document to reflect these changes. Specifically there is now a Category-Overlay field in the specifications with the expected input to be “Rookie”.

We hope that contest software authors will be able to update their software to include these changes. Until that time, contesters will have to manually enter the following line in their Cabrillo log: “Category-Overlay: Rookie” if they qualify as a rookie and wish to compete for this new plaque.

We have also aligned our Cabrillo document to update to all the current Cabrillo specifications to the published standards that apply to our contests based on the 2020 publication of the V3 standards.

The updated document is available for download at: