Early Morning Coffee QSO Party

An hour of 80 and 40 m phone at six in the morning, twice a year, scored on a sliding scale by the age of the operator you work.

Rules at mysarl.org.zaThe rules are the sponsor's. This page holds the dates and the facts.

When it runs

Second Wednesday of May and October

0400Z → 0500Z Wednesday

Times are UTC, as the sponsor states them.

Next runnings

0400Z Wed 14 Oct → 0500Z Wed 14 Oct · 1h2026
in 12 days
0400Z Wed 12 May → 0500Z Wed 12 May · 1h2027
in 222 days
0400Z Wed 13 Oct → 0500Z Wed 13 Oct · 1h2027
in 376 days
0400Z Wed 10 May → 0500Z Wed 10 May · 1h2028
in 586 days
0400Z Wed 11 Oct → 0500Z Wed 11 Oct · 1h2028
in 740 days
0400Z Wed 9 May → 0500Z Wed 9 May · 1h2029
in 950 days

Operating

Modes: SSB
Bands: 80m40m
80 m: 3 603-3 650 and 3 703-3 800 kHz, with 3 651-3 699 kHz contest free. 40 m: 7 063-7 100 and 7 130-7 200 kHz, with 7 100-7 130 kHz contest free.
Exchange: Your call sign, an RS report, your grid square, your age category and your name.
Logs: no deadline or format recorded
Who can enter: Anyone, anywhere.
The manual states NO participation clause for this contest -- unlike SARL's own HAMNET and Top Band contests, which name their entity lists -- and there is no blanket clause in the general rules either. Its scoring contemplates stations outside the region, so it is recorded as worldwide, with verified false because that is an absence of words rather than a statement.

Where this comes from

Checked against the sponsor: Yes. The rule on this page was read off Bo Karoo Amateur Radio Club's own published rules. Link last confirmed 2026-08-19.
What the source says: 2026 SARL Contest Manual Version 1.1 (2025-12-15), mysarl.org.za, 'The Early Morning Coffee QSO Party': '1. Aim. To create an interest and activity on 80 and 40 m in the mornings and to try and contact as many of the early morning stations as possible. This is a phone only contest and scoring on a sliding scale would depend on the age of the person that you work.' '2. Dates and Times 04:00 UTC (06:00 CAT) to 05:00 UTC (07:00 CAT) on the 2nd Wednesday of May and October - Wednesday 13th May and Wednesday 14th October 2026.' Exchange: '4.1. Your call sign, a RS report, your Grid Square, your age category and name.' Sponsor Club - Bo Karoo Amateur Radio Club.
Recorded caveats: An hour at 0400 UTC, which is 0600 local -- the earliest start of any contest in this catalog, and the point of it. Two months a year rather than monthly, which is what monthly_nth_weekday's `months` field carries. SOURCED FROM THE SARL CONTEST MANUAL, WHICH IS NOT AN AGGREGATOR. The manual carries this contest's FULL rules -- aim, dates, exchange, frequencies, scoring, log sheets -- and names its organising club, rather than summarising a calendar entry. It is the venue in which South African clubs publish their contest rules, the way DARC's Ausschreibungen or UBA's rules pages are, so it is a primary source for these contests and not a third-party listing. The distinction that matters: an aggregator republishes rules it found elsewhere, and this is where the rules appear.

Something wrong? How to report it — a link to the sponsor's own page is all it takes.

Take it with you

Add to Google Calendar Subscribe (iCal)This record as JSON

Add to Google Calendar puts the next running in as a single event. It is one event, not a subscription — come back for the one after it, or use the feed below.

Subscribe (iCal) carries this contest's runnings for the next twelve months as UTC instants and keeps them current. Apple Calendar, Outlook and Thunderbird take this address directly. Its identifiers are stable across deploys, so re-subscribing does not duplicate anything: https://contestclock.com/api/ics?id=early-morning-coffee-qso-party

Google has no working one-click subscribe. Paste that address into Settings → Add calendar → From URL. Google then polls it on its own schedule, often 8–24 hours, and that cannot be forced — so use Add to Google Calendar above if you want the next running in your calendar now.