High-speed telegraphy

The first international high-speed telegraphy competition was the HST European Championship held in Moscow, Russia, in 1983.

Most international, national, and local HST competitions are held in the countries of the former Eastern Bloc.

Two of the events are based on simulations of amateur radio activity and are referred to as the Radioamateur Practicing Tests (RPT).

Subsequent tests are each conducted at an increased speed until no competitor remains who can copy the text without excessive error.

Competitors send a printed message of five character groups at a specific speed, which is judged for its accuracy by a panel of referees.

Most transmission tests restrict the type of equipment that may be used to send the Morse code message.

Each call sign is sent in Morse code generated at different audio frequencies and speeds, timed to overlap each other.

HST competitions generally separate the competitors into different categories based on age and gender.

13th IARU World HST Championship was held in Herceg-Novi, Montenegro from 21 till 25 September 2016.

Note that the system to measure the telegraphy speed at IARU HST events has changed.

The sum of all team scores of the top ten nations from all HST events since 1999 are tabulated below.