This year was my first time participating in the RAC Canada Day contest on my own. It was a lot of fun and also very instructive. Here are a few things I learned.

First, everything you need to know about the RAC contests (Canada Day or the Winter Day) is located on RAC website.

At the end of the contest, logs must be submitted to RAC. They will accept paper logs for submissions with less than 100 entries, but they really prefer electronic logs, which must be formatted as Cabrillo.

A Cabrillo file is really just plain text file formatted in a very specific way. For more information, see:

• This RAC pdf
• The WWROF website

For example, here's a copy of my Cabrillo file (with only a few entries as example): </hidden>

START-OF-LOG: 3.0
CREATED-BY: RAC_Contests.ods v2020.07.04 by VA7FI
CALLSIGN: VA7FI
LOCATION: BC
CONTEST: RAC CANADA DAY
CATEGORY-OPERATOR: SINGLE-OP
CATEGORY-BAND: ALL
CATEGORY-MODE: SSB
CATEGORY-POWER: LOW
CATEGORY-TRANSMITTER: UNLIMITED
CLAIMED-SCORE: 11564
CLUB: Sun Coast Amateur Radio Club Society
NAME: Patrick Truchon
ADDRESS: REDACTED
ADDRESS-CITY: Roberts Creek
ADDRESS-STATE-PROVINCE: British Columbia
ADDRESS-POSTALCODE: V0N 2W1
ADDRESS-COUNTRY: Canada
EMAIL: va7fi@rbox.me
OPERATORS: @VA7FI
SOAPBOX: First Canada Day contest on my own. Lots of fun!
QSO: 14186 PH 2020-07-01 0008 VA7FI          59 BC      VE3PJ          59 ON
QSO: 14198 PH 2020-07-01 0012 VA7FI          59 BC      WB0TEV         59 14
QSO:146520 PH 2020-07-01 0112 VA7FI          59 BC      VE7DX          59 BC
QSO: 14211 PH 2020-07-01 0139 VA7FI          59 BC      N8OO           59 201
QSO: 14152 PH 2020-07-01 0148 VA7FI          59 BC      VE2CJR         59 QC
QSO: 14165 PH 2020-07-01 0159 VA7FI          59 BC      VE6RAC         59 AB
END-OF-LOG:

</hidden>