All transmissions must be done within the amateur bands using amateur license rules.
The Data rate is the minimum of the total data transfered in each direction during the measurement period.
It is recommended, but not required that a 30 minute period be used where possible.
The Distance is measured between the closest feeder locations of the first and last stations.
Rationale: What is useful is getting data from location A to Z, distance travelled (eg to geostationary satellites) is irrelevant.
The score is the Data rate / Distance (bits/second/meter).
Multiple hops are encouraged, but the distance counted is only from the first to the last station.
Rationale: Improving channel utilisation is a major part of the speed of radio.
Data must not be missing and must not be corrupted. (Data must be retransmitted, or sufficient FEC or other mechanism.)
Rationale: Blatting data and just decoding what is available is insufficient.
Attempt reports must include:
The location of both ends. The center position of a maidenhead locator is used if maidenhead locator is used to describe a location.
The start time and end time.
The power, frequency, mode, channel width and propogation mode (LoS, Ionospheric, EME, Space, Meteor Scatter etc) of each leg in each direction. As well as callsigns and locations of each end of each leg. RST is not required.
Attempt reports are recommended to also include a report of how it was achieved, pictures, diagrams, videos etc, but it is not required for the attempt to count.
Rationale: The motivation is to drive forth the state of the art in data transfer speeds.