SWL - Short Listening Period - contests
Summary: The SLP's are short listening period contests, taking place 8 times a year. In order to participate to the contest one should listen 3 times one hour in the contest weekend and try to log as much different prefixes and countries as possible. The final score is the sum of the prefixes of each band multiplied by the sum of the heard DXCC-countries logged on each band.
A logged contact is complete when you have noted: Frequency/Band - Date - Time(UTC) - Call of the heard station - Call of the counter station - Report of the heard station including contest extensions.  
Only contacts in phone on 80, 40, 20, 15 and 10 m bands are allowed for the contest and count all for one point.
One should stay at the same band for at least 10 minutes and a counter station may not return in the log within 5 minutes.
Give SWL-contesting a try an send your log with score calculation to the contest manager Ruud Ivens,  NL290(at)veron.nl , or to his home address (see pt. 10 below), within a month after the contest weekend.

Detailed description

1. The SLP-contests are open to SWL's all over the world.

2. The contest dates in 2010 are:
    1.     30/31 January
    2.     6/7 March
    3.     27/28 March
    4.     1/3 May
    5.    10/11 July
    6.    11/12 September
    7.    25/26 September
    8.    30/31 October

3. Only phone contacts are permitted on the bands: 80, 40, 20, 15 and 10 meter.

4. During each contest weekend only 3 hours in the period Saturday 00.00 UTC and Sunday 24.00 UTC are valid for the SLP-log. These 3 hours may be divided in blocks of one, two or three hours (1+1+1 or 2+1 or 1+2 or 3 sequential hours). Each block has to start at the beginning of an hour. Of course one may listen much longer than three hours but submit a log of only 3 hours sampled.

5. You have to log as much different prefixes and DXCC-entities as possible. Each heard station can be logged completely when you heard it mentioning the own call, the call of the counter station (working) and the report given  (including contest extensions).  There's no need to hear the counter station.  In case you also may hear the counter station and its report, you may use that station as a separate log entry.  A prefix is valid if it is conform to the WPX-rules and a country if it is conform to the DXCC-rules. Each prefix counts for one point and each country for one multiplier.  On each band a prefix only counts once and a country too. On another band the prefixes and countries count again.  The total score is calculated by multiplying the overall number of prefixes (sum of all bands) by the overall number of multipliers (sum of all bands)

6. You have to apply a separate log sheet for each band (not necessary for e-mail logs). Note your SWL-call, frequency/band and sheet number on top of each sheet. A log has to contain: Date, Time (UTC), Station heard, call of the counter station, report including the contest extension, the prefix point and the multiplier, indicated by the DXCC-entity. A heard station not participating in the running contest will probably exchange a report without sequence number or contest extension; in that case only the RS report is sufficient.  Calculate the score on a summary sheet. On the summary sheet you also have to put the number of sheets, your complete name, address and a short description of the equipment used.  The summary sheet also has to contain a statement that you observed the rules of the contest. Logs sent via E-mail are very welcome, preferably in Cabrillo format, another type of plain TXT (ASCII) with tab or comma between the fields, MS-WORD or MS-EXCEL.  An E-mail log may be in order of time; in that case a split by band is not required under the restriction that each logged contact contains a band indication in the line.

7. Only contacts between amateur radio stations are valid. A station in the column "worked" (counter station) only may return in the log after 5 minutes. One has to stay on the same band for at least 10 minutes. One may use only one receiver at the same time and only single operator class is allowed. Duplicate logged stations, too early returned counter stations, duplicate prefixes and other log lines without points should be marked by -- or 0 in the column for the points (when you work out the log later, you may also delete these log lines). Logs with serious errors or too many mistakes will be put aside. In case of doubt concerning the validity of a logged contact the contest manager decides. Signing the log means you observed the contest rules.

8. In every SLP contest a souvenir is available for the highest classification, not having won a souvenir earlier during the running year (you only may win a souvenir once a year, but you also have a chance scoring the 2nd, 3rd or even the 4th place in a contest). The Daan Dekker Memorial will be awarded to the overall winner of this years SLP-contest sequence, summing the 6 best results.  SWL's participating to at least 3 SLP-contests will be certified at the end of the sequence.

9. The contest results will be published in the ham radio magazine of the VERON - Electron, by E-mail and on the Internet: http://swl.veron.nl/swlcontest.htm

10. The log of each separate contest should be sent to the contest manager within one month after the contest weekend (the postmark is decisive):  Ruud Ivens, NL-290, Hittekamp 29, 3956 RE Leersum, The Netherlands. Or via E-mail: NL290(at)veron.nl. The reception of E-mail logs will be confirmed.

11. If paper log: write good readable. Digital logs are very welcome: see rule 6. When you lo totally more than 20 entries on any band, a checklist of prefixes and multipliers is preferred. It helps you and us with checking the logs.

An example of a SLP log:
NL-1000    Band: 40 m  
   

Explanation:
*) : duplicate prefix ( ON6 )
**): violation of the 5 minutes rule for counter stations.

(In this example the logs for 20 and 15 m are not shown)

=====================================================================================
Example of a prefix dupe sheet:
Prefix dupe sheet NL-1000

======================================================================================
Example of a summary sheet:
Summary sheet NL-1000