As we said during the news, the VK shires contest is on next weekend!

We'll be on-air and expect to hear you too! There is no excuse, it's not hard, it's fun and you can play as long or as short as you want.

If you've never done a contest, think of it as a perfect excuse to practice. It's a great way to test your gear, to test your antennas and you'll get the opportunity to work stations all around VK in weird and wonderful locations. Of course the world is able to work us, so you can collect some DXCC stations while you're playing around.

When you make a contact, the exchange is your callsign, followed by a signal report, followed by the shire code for the shire you're in. I've put a link to the list of shires on the vk6.net website in the announcement section. So, for example, I'll be operating from the City of Canning, so my exchange to you would be something like VK6FLAB 59 CA6.

If you're working a station outside of Australia, they'll need to give you their callsign, a signal report and their CQ Zone number.

The VK Shires contest is on 80m, 40m, 20m, 15m and 10m on SSB and CW only.

There are a few other rules that you need to look at and the same page on the vk6.net website will also have a link to the rules.

The contest starts at 2pm on Saturday the 6th of June and runs for 24 hours.

Last year the VK6 F-calls made a big dent in proceedings, so if they can do that, you can do it too!