SARL Equinox 6m African DX Entity Challenge (September)

A month of 6m FT8 around the equinox, scoring DX entities worked and confirmed, open worldwide.

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

When it runs

September 16, every year

0001Z → 2359Z 29 days later

Times are UTC, as the sponsor states them.

Next runnings

0001Z Wed 16 Sep → 2359Z Thu 15 Oct · 719h 58m2026
on the air now
0001Z Thu 16 Sep → 2359Z Fri 15 Oct · 719h 58m2027
in 349 days
0001Z Sat 16 Sep → 2359Z Sun 15 Oct · 719h 58m2028
in 715 days
0001Z Sun 16 Sep → 2359Z Mon 15 Oct · 719h 58m2029
in 1080 days
0001Z Mon 16 Sep → 2359Z Tue 15 Oct · 719h 58m2030
in 1445 days

Operating

Modes: FT8/FT4 FT8
Bands: 6m
Exchange: Signal reports; contacts must be two-way point to point.
Logs: no deadline or format recorded
Who can enter: Anyone, anywhere.
'1.6. The Contest is open to all licensed Radio Amateurs worldwide.'

Where this comes from

Checked against the sponsor: Yes. The rule on this page was read off SARL'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, 'SARL Equinox 6m African DX Entity Challenge': '2. Dates: Two challenges, each one month long over each equinox: 2.1. From 00:01UTC on the 16th March to 23:59 UTC on 15th April. 2.2. From 00:01UTC on the 16th September to 23:59 UTC on 15th October.' Aim: '1.6. The Contest is open to all licensed Radio Amateurs worldwide.' Mode: '3. Frequency: FT8 mode on the 6m band.' Contacts: '4.1. Contacts must be two-way point to point. Stations shall exchange signal reports.' Checked against SARL's own published dates as well as its rules: SARL publishes SARL-Contests-2026-Calendar.ics on the same page, whose times carry TZID="South Africa Standard Time" (a fixed +0200, no DST -- its own X-CALSTART confirms 09:00 local as 07:00Z). That calendar is an independent second source for every date encoded here.
Recorded caveats: A month-long challenge rather than a weekend contest, which is why it is the longest single occurrence in the catalog. 16 September to 15 October is 29 days. The two legs are separate records because their end offsets differ -- the March leg runs 30 days and the September leg 29 -- and one record carries one start/end pair. SARL's own calendar marks each leg with a start and an end event rather than one long block, and those markers confirm both instants.

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

Take it with you

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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.