The Scandinavian Activity Contest (SAC-CW) is always an enjoyable contest from the UK : Scandinavian stations are relatively easy to work, usually with loud signals on HF during the day and on LF at night. The contest Multiplier is Call-Areas.
In earlier years the SACs used to run for 27 hours from 15z to 18z, but they now run for 24 hours from 12z Sat to 12z Sun. [This year's SAC-SSB is on 10-11 October 2020.]
This year G3TXF operated in SAC-CW for about 15 hours, making 493 QSOs with 117 Call-Area multpliers.
Unlike many other contests, the SAC-CW is on just five bands (80m -10m) and does not include 160m. The absence of having to chase multipliers on 160m helps make the SAC-CW a fun contest.
The bulk of this year's QSOs were on 80m, 40m and 20m. There were only a small handful of potential QSOs to be made from the UK on 15m and 10m.
The multipliers are the "Call-Areas" within Scandinavia: eg SM0, SA0, SD0, SF0 etc all count as "SM0".
Although working most of the prefixes in LA, OH, OZ and SM is not too difficult, the JW, JX, TF, OX and OY prefixes are much rarer. This year there was an OJ0 active, which added to the possible number of Call-Areas.
The Multiplier summary shows that 37 Call-Areas were worked on each of 80m, 40m and 20m, however the mix of Multipliers was slightly different. In total across all bands 41 different Call-Areas were worked.
LA0, LA2, LA3, LA4, LA5, LA6, LA7, LA8, OH0, OH1, OH2, OH3, OH4, OH5, OH6, OH7, OH8, OH9
OZ0, OZ1, OZ2, OZ3, OZ4, OZ5, OZ6, OZ7, OZ8, SM0, SM1, SM2, SM3, SM4, SM5, SM6, SM7, SM9
OJ0, OX3, OY0, OY1, TF3
Of these 41 Call-Areas, the four 'missed' on 80m were OJ0, OX3, OY1 and TF3. The same four were also 'missed' on 40m. However the four 'missed' on 20m were OY0, OZ0, OZ5 and OZ8.
While OH and the further away areas of Sweden (eg SM2 and SM3) can be relatively easy to work on the higher bands, the nearer countries (LA and OZ) can sometimes be more difficult.
The only Call-Areas worked on 15m were OH1, OH5, OH7, SM0, SM3 and SM4.
The antennas at G3TXF for SAC-CW were three fixed wire dipoles for 80m, 40m and 20m at about 75ft high. For 15m, the 40m dipole was force fed through a tuner. Nothing for 10m. Each of the three dipoles in the photo (40m left, 20m lower middle and 80m right) have baluns at their feed points.
The Scandinavian Activity Contest website has a score database going back to 1999. G3TXF first submitted a SAC-CW log in 1969. This table summarises G3TXF's participation in the SAC over the past 50+ years.
| Year | Callsign | Mode | QSOs | Points | Mults | Points |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1965 | G3TXF | CW | 2 | 2 | ||
| 1969 | G3TXF | CW | 352 | 352 | 106 | 37,312 |
| 1969 | G3TXF | SSB | 21 | 21 | ||
| 1971 | G3TXF | SSB | 240 | 240 | 82 | 19,270 |
| 1974 | G3TXF | CW | 301 | 301 | 101 | 30,401 |
| 1974 | G3TXF | SSB | 151 | 151 | 58 | 8,758 |
| 1976 | G3TXF | CW | 351 | 351 | 110 | 38,610 |
| 1978 | G3TXF | SSB | 4 | 4 | ||
| 1981 | G3TXF | SSB | 4 | 4 | ||
| 1982 | G3TXF | CW | 369 | 368 | 95 | 34,960 |
| 1983 | G3TXF | CW | 362 | 362 | 105 | 38,010 |
| 1984 | G3TXF | CW | 301 | 301 | 115 | 34,615 |
| 1986 | G3TXF | CW | 124 | 124 | 51 | 6,273 |
| 1987 | G3TXF | CW | 148 | 148 | 33 | 4,686 |
| 1988 | G3TXF | CW | 124 | 124 | 49 | 5,635 |
| 1989 | G3TXF | CW | 331 | 320 | 117 | 37,440 |
| 1990 | G3TXF | CW | 19 | 19 | ||
| 1991 | G3TXF | CW | 9 | 9 | ||
| 1994 | G3TXF | CW | 172 | 172 | 63 | 10,836 |
| 1996 | G3TXF | CW | 16 | 16 | ||
| 1997 | G3TXF | CW | 264 | 264 | 109 | 28,776 |
| 1998 | G3TXF | CW | 183 | 183 | 82 | 15,006 |
| 1999 | G3TXF | CW | 307 | 307 | 127 | 38,989 |
| 2002 | G3TXF | CW | 241 | 241 | 110 | 26,510 |
| 2007 | G3TXF | CW | 166 | 166 | 64 | 10,624 |
| 2007 | G3TXF | SSB | 42 | 42 | 29 | 1,218 |
| 2008 | G3TXF | CW | 404 | 404 | 122 | 49,288 |
| 2009 | G3TXF | CW | 192 | 192 | 74 | 14,208 |
| 2011 | G3TXF | CW | 671 | 671 | 143 | 95,953 |
| 2013 | PJ4/G3TXF | CW | 244 | 448 | 112 | 50,176 |
| 2017 | G3TXF | CW | 477 | 477 | 108 | 51,516 |
| 2018 | G3TXF | CW | 363 | 363 | 111 | 40,293 |
| 2019 | G3TXF | CW | 226 | 226 | 88 | 19,888 |
| 2020 | G3TXF | CW | 493 | 493 | 117 | 57,681 |
The Scandinavian Activity Contest scores listed above are a mixture of :
(a) reworked claimed SAC scores (1965-1998)
(b) the as-published results from the SAC scores database (1999-2019)
(c) the claimed score for SAC-CW 2020
This year's (2020) claimed score [493 QSOs, 117 Multipliers and 57,681 Points] is much less than the 671 QSOs, 143 Multipliers and 95,953 Points achieved in 2011. Although the 2011 score had been set as "target" for this year, propagation conditions (and possibly reduced activity in Scandinavia) did not allow getting anywhere near to it.