The last full weekend of October kicks off the contesting year for amateur radio. The big one is the CQ WW SSB contest sponsored by CQ Magazine. I’ll cover some basics for this contest along with some strategy and etiquette, and give a preview of what to plan for in November.
CQ WW SSB Contest (00:00Z October 27 to 24:00 October 28)
The CQ WW SSB and CW contests are two of the biggest contests of the year. SSB is always held the last full weekend in October. The CW version of the contest is held a month later (often colliding with the Thanksgiving weekend). Last year over 8600 logs were submitted for the phone contest. That is a target rich environment if you are contesting, or just in the event to get QSOs for chasing awards.
The exchange for the contest is pretty simple: a signal report (always 59) and your CQ Zone (see the map at the top of this post). We’re in zone 5. The Caribbean is in zone 8. Europe is mostly in zones 14 and 15. We hear a lot of Brazil in these contests, too, so expect to hear from zone 11, also.
Guide to the CQ Worldwide DX Contest
With many thousands of hams on the bands, things can get crowded. Here’s what you need to know. The big stations with stacked Yagi arrays, full legal limit (or beyond, as is often alleged), and multiple operators will camp out on frequencies low in the band. They will be loud, and they’ll sit on those frequencies for the whole contest. Unless you’ve got a station like I’ve described (and a small army of volunteers to operate) you can’t compete with that. You can only work them. Remember our two operating styles described in an earlier post? You’ll almost certainly be using search-and-pounce (S&P) to get your QSOs.
Take a moment and look over how the points and multipliers work for this contest. (That’s good advice for any contest!) Points go like this:
Contacts between stations on different continents count three (3) points.
Contacts between stations on the same continent but in different countries count one (1) point. Exception: Contacts between stations in different countries within the North American boundaries count two (2) points.
Contacts between stations in the same country have zero (0) QSO point value, but are permitted for zone or country multiplier credit.
That last bullet point is important. Signals from within the United States will often be the strongest, especially here at the bottom of the solar cycle, but they are worth zero points. As you might imagine, calling a station and asking for a QSO when you offer no points is a tough sell. Don’t call US stations in this contest.
Multipliers are zones and countries (each band counts separately). So, variety is the spice of life — and the secret for success in CQ WW. Try to work as many countries as you can and the zones will almost always take care of themselves.
Here’s my one exception to the “don’t call US stations” guidance above: at the end of a contest, in those last few hours Sunday afternoon, if I’m missing a zone 3, 4, or 5 on a given band, and if I find a US station in that zone, I’ll call them for a “zero pointer” and be sure to say “thanks for the mult.” I only do it if the other station is lonely (has called CQ for a while with no takers). It is a little unsavory, but missing a multiplier that you can hear is awful. In general, you should be able to work Canadian stations for these mults. I call a US station only if all else has failed.
My final suggestion is this: keep calls simple, and the exchange short. You call them, they give you their exchange, and you say only “595”. That’s it. No chit-chat! There are very serious competitors in these contests and every second counts. Be respectful of other people’s time.
November Contests
November is the first full month of the contesting season and there are a couple of good ones on the docket. They are:
I typically take an index card and write out everything above (except the serial number) and tape it to the top of the computer monitor. That way I don’t need to think. All I need to do is read. So, my card has:
___serial___ A NE1RD 02 NH
As with any contest, I’ll suggest to anybody new to listen, listen, listen! Listen to how the exchange sounds. Get a feeling for the rhythm of the QSOs. Once you’ve got it, do a little S&P and get some points.
QSO Parties and other contests
Typically QSO parties run during months without big contests, so there aren’t any in November. But, there are some other international contests that might be fun including:
Ukrainian DX Contest (November 3-4)
10-10 International Fall Contest digital (November 10-11)
OK/OM DX Contest, CW (November 10-11)
LZ DX Contest (November 17-18)
ARRL 160-Meter Contest
For details on these contests, or a complete listing of contests for November (or anytime) see the contestcalendar.com website.
Good Luck
Contesting is a great way to have some fun on the air. You’ll have plenty of people to talk to, and you know the conversation won’t drag! I used many of those contests early in my time as a ham working toward awards like DXCC. You don’t even have to submit your log to the contest sponsor if you don’t want to. Just get on and have fun. Good luck and 73 de NE1RD.
Contesting, as per my last post, is an on-air activity where many (often thousands) of people get on the air and exchange small pieces of information for fun and bragging rights. This little corner of our hobby has its own nomenclature. I’m here to help decode some of this and help you get ready for your first contest.
The Cabrillo File Format
It might be helpful to work backwards a bit through this problem. At the end of this endeavor, you’ll want to submit your log to the contest sponsor. This will be your official entry into the contest. Since the vast majority of contests are all the same or at least the data demanded by the sponsors is the same, folks got together and made a common computer file format to do this work. That file format is called Cabrillo (pronounced Cab-Re-Oh).
The Cabrillo file format is important not just because it is the standard way to submit your entry to a contest sponsor, but because the common definitions for concepts in contesting are defined in this standard. This article will walk through some of the most common and most important of these concepts. (I’ll use the Cabrillo 3.0 specification for this discussion.)
Categories
Competitions often have different categories. For example, the Boston Marathon is a road race that has at least three major categories: Men, Women, and Wheelchair. Radio contests are the same way, except there are often many more ways of dividing the participants. These divisions fall into categories. When you enter a contest you will be required to select the categories you wish to compete within, and then you must limit yourself to the boundaries outlined by that category.
NOTE: A contest may not support all the different categories listed below. It is crucial that you read the contest rules and understand the categories that are supported.
Here is a list of categories most commonly used:
CATEGORY-ASSISTED:
To be assisted means that you got direct help in your contest effort to find people to talk with, or to decode or capture the information during an interaction such as the call sign or the exchange. Here are some examples of things that could make you assisted.
DX Spotting Network. If you use the internet (or even the off-the-air packet spotting network) to find people to talk to, then you are assisted. Some logging programs have this feature built-in, or you can use websites such as www.dxheat.com.
CW Skimmer. A fellow named Alex Shovkoplyas, VE3NEA, made something remarkable a few years ago and his invention turned contesting on its head. CW Skimmer is a piece of software that works in conjunction with a software-defined radio to look over a wide swath of a band (or bands) and decodes any CW signals on those frequencies. It understands enough about CW to extract the callsign and show it next to the signal. Figure 1 below is a screenshot from this system (original from DX Atlas).
Any CW decoding software or hardware. If you are using the CW mode then you are considered assisted if you use any computer software or hardware to help decode the signal. You have to do this work in your head to be considered unassisted.
Anything that could be argued to help to make QSOs. If you have a friend do logging for you then you are assisted. Similarly, you are assisted if somebody works a second radio helping you find stations, or if somebody helps you fix a problem with your station during the contest. [Help outside the contest is OK.] In short, if you had help, then you are assisted.
So, the two possible answers to this question are:
CATEGORY-ASSISTED: UNASSISTED
CATEGORY-ASSISTED: ASSISTED
Figure 1. CW Skimmer pile-up
CATEGORY-BAND:
You can indicate which bands you wish to use with your entry. You can either declare ALL bands (legal for this contest), or a single band. Entering the contest as a single band entry means you compete only with others limited to that band.
Single band entries are a lot of fun. I have run single band efforts in the CQ WPX SSB contest from St. Thomas (KP2) on both 10m and 15m. Each night when the band closed I would turn off the radio, get dinner, and spent the rest of the night lounging or swimming in our pool. When the sun rose the next day I was back on the radio. It was a wonderful way to spend a couple of days of my vacation.
The choices for this category (HF entries, at least) are:
CATEGORY-BAND: ALL
CATEGORY-BAND: 160M
CATEGORY-BAND: 80M
CATEGORY-BAND: 40M
CATEGORY-BAND: 20M
CATEGORY-BAND: 15M
CATEGORY-BAND: 10M
CATEGORY-MODE:
You can declare you used a single mode (like CW), or have a mixture of modes in your log. The choices for this category are:
CATEGORY-MODE: SSB
CATEGORY-MODE: CW
CATEGORY-MODE: RTTY
CATEGORY-MODE: FM
CATEGORY-MODE: MIXED
CATEGORY-OPERATOR:
You either work alone, or within a group. So, the choices are typically:
CATEGORY-OPERATOR: SINGLE-OP
CATEGORY-OPERATOR: MULTI-OP
CATEGORY-OPERATOR: CHECKLOG
A CHECKLOG category means you wish to have your entry included in the contest analysis, but you don’t want to have a score computed for you, or to enter the contest formally. CHECKLOGs are helpful to contest sponsors to verify that stations were really on-the-air when they said they were. (If you violate the rules, your entry might be reduced to a CHECKLOG at the whim of the contest sponsor.)
CATEGORY-POWER:
The three categories defined in Cabrillo 3.0 are:
CATEGORY-POWER: HIGH
CATEGORY-POWER: LOW
CATEGORY-POWER: QRP
But, please note that the precise definition for these things might vary contest-to-contest. For example, some contests declare that the upper bound on LOW power is 100 Watts, where other contests declare that limit to be 150 Watts. As always, read the rules.
CATEGORY-STATION:
The station category is a good example of where the standard identifies a potpourri of choices, but typical contests only support a small subset of them. Most of the time we operated FIXED in our house or a friend’s house. Similarly, the categories MOBILE and PORTABLE are from your car or from a location where you set up your equipment away from home.
I’ll not go into the definitions of the remaining ones here as they are defined in the contests they support (and those definitions vary).
CATEGORY-STATION: FIXED
CATEGORY-STATION: MOBILE
CATEGORY-STATION: PORTABLE
CATEGORY-STATION: ROVER
CATEGORY-STATION: ROVER-LIMITED
CATEGORY-STATION: ROVER-UNLIMITED
CATEGORY-STATION: EXPEDITION
CATEGORY-STATION: HQ
CATEGORY-STATION: SCHOOL
CATEGORY-TIME:
Some contests allow you to limit your participation time, and you’ll be competing with others that lived within those limits, too. Cabrillo defines three such categories.
CATEGORY-TIME: 6-HOURS
CATEGORY-TIME:12-HOURS
CATEGORY-TIME:24-HOURS
CATEGORY-TRANSMITTER:
The number of simultaneously available transmitters is defined in this category. ONE and TWO are self-explanatory, and the others are defined within their respective contest rules. Here are your choices:
CATEGORY-TRANSMITTER: ONE
CATEGORY-TRANSMITTER: TWO
CATEGORY-TRANSMITTER: LIMITED
CATEGORY-TRANSMITTER: UNLIMITED
CATEGORY-TRANSMITTER: SWL
CATEGORY-OVERLAY:
This is a layered category that allows you to compete within a smaller group of similarly declared operators. While definitions can vary contest-to-contest, in general, these things include CLASSIC (a 24 hour time limit within some CQ Magazine sponsored contests), ROOKIE (an operator licensed recently), TB-WIRES (your station only has a tri-band antenna for 10m/15m/20m that probably has some gain, and you have wires for everything else). Your full range of choices in this category are:
CATEGORY-OVERLAY: CLASSIC
CATEGORY-OVERLAY: ROOKIE
CATEGORY-OVERLAY: TB-WIRES
CATEGORY-OVERLAY: NOVICE-TECH
CATEGORY-OVERLAY: OVER-50
Contest-Specific Notions
One of the reasons why it is important to read the contest rules is that many smaller contests have additional, or at least more specific categories. For example, the California QSO Party has the following categories that are combined with the CATEGORY-OPERATOR: and CATEGORY-POWER: items:
Fixed
County
Expedition
Mobile
School
YL
Youth
New-Contester
Also, this particular contest identifies LOW power as 200 Watts or less. That’s vastly different from most other contests where LOW power is limited to just 100 Watts. That’s 3 dB or one half of an S-unit difference. It might make the difference between being heard or lost in the noise!
Contest Types
Contests each have their own rules, but there are some general categories of contests that can be defined. Here are some.
DX contest. In this type of contest, your main objective is to talk with people outside of your home country. Some contests insist on this (or insist that good contacts are only with one country, the United States, as with the ARRL International DX contest). Check the rules to see if contacts within your home country are even allowed.
Domestic contests and QSO Parties. There are many contests where the main objective is to speak with those inside the United States, or to those inside a specific state (or set of states). Most states have a “QSO Party”, a contest where points are awarded by making contacts within that particular state, and multipliers are counties within the state. Some contests limit power to 100 Watts (no HIGH power entries). QSO Parties are fun because they are much more friendly (and less cut-throat!) than those big DX contests. People are on to have fun during QSO Parties more than in any other kind of contest.
Sprints. A Sprint is a contest that tries to level the playing field between big stations and smaller ones. The idea is this:
Person A calls CQ on a frequency.
Person B responds to the CQ and the exchange is made.
After the QSO is over, Person A must vacate the frequency, ceding it to their caller.
Person B now calls CQ on that frequency.
Person C responds to the CQ and the exchange is made.
Then Person C owns the frequency.
And so on…
Single-band contests. The ARRL 10m Contest is an example of a contest where all activity is limited to a single band. In single-band contests, you can usually talk to anybody on that band for points.
Special-station contests. Sometimes the point is to talk to a particular kind of station such as a school. The ARRL School Club Roundup is such a contest. In this contest schools count for many more points than other contacts.
Exchange trivia
There are a number of different types of data that are exchanged during a contest QSO. The easy ones are call sign and signal report. And, I covered most of the really common ones in my last post such as name, state, serial number, etc. There are others that are less common. Here are a few that might come up in popular contests:
Zone. Here we need to be careful because there are two types of zones used for contests. The first is the CQ Magazine zone. We in the Northeast are located in zone 5 with that system. The other system is the ITU zone numbering. We in the Northeast are in zone 8 for that system. These two zone maps appear below in figure 2 and figure 3.
Precedence. I’ve always found this term to be confusing and non-specific. What the ARRL Sweepstakes contest is looking for here is a single letter. This single letter is part of every exchange you make on every QSO. Here are the choices:
Q ~ for Single Operator QRP
A ~ for Single Operator Low Power
B ~ for Single Operator High Power
U ~ Any Single Operator station using assistance
M ~ Multiple Operators
S ~ School Club
Maidenhead Locator. This is also known as a “grid square.” The name is derived from the meeting place where this system was created: Maidenhead, England. The locator for Nashua is FN42. There are many websites you can use to find yours (such as QRZ).
ARRL or RAC section. The ARRL has divided the United States into sections. Canada also has subdivided its country into sections. A comprehensive list of these sections can be found on the ARRL website. Other countries also have states or sections, also. Japan has prefectures and Russia has oblasts. Section usage is common in regional contests.
Figure 2. CQ Zone Map
Figure 3. ITU Zone Map
A Language of Its Own
Contesting, like any hobby, has its own words and its own language. I hope this small outline of terms helps you feel more comfortable jumping into the world of contesting!
The pronunciation of “contesting” seemed strange when I first heard it. “CONtesting.” I knew about “conTESTing” something. That was to oppose it in some way. But “CONtesting” seemed like a weird construction. The meaning of it is pretty simple, though: to participate in a contest.
Charlie, W1CBD operating the pileups from AB1OC station
Radio contesting is concerned with competitions on the air. Don’t think battle to the death or professional sports where there is one winner and everybody else is disappointed. Instead, contesting is like a fun run held on a Saturday morning where some people run for time, others just run with their friends for some companionship, and some just walk. It is OK to push a buggy with your infant as you go. Everybody is there to just have fun.
In some of the larger contests, such as CQ Magazine’s CQ World Wide DX SSB contest, thousands of people participate. In 2017, over 8600 logs were submitted, and I’m certain that some people played in the contest without sending their login. That’s a lot of people! Note that there are only about one hundred “winners” that topped their categories. Everybody else played in the contest without expecting to “win” anything. They just wanted to have fun.
How Does It Work?
What does it mean to have a contest on the air? In general, these events are held within a certain time frame measured in hours, or at most, a couple of days, and the general idea is usually to talk to as many people as you can, as quickly as you can, on as many bands as you can, being careful to record information you get from those other stations. You capture all this into a logging program on your computer. When the contest is over, there is a special way to package up your log and submit it to the contest sponsor like CQ Magazine.
What happens next is kind of amazing, and it could only happen in our age of computers. The contest sponsor usually feeds all these logs into a computer which then checks the logs for accuracy. If you think you’ve worked me (NE1RD) in the contest at a certain time and on a certain frequency, then that QSO should be recorded in your log and in my log. If we exchanged information (such as our name) then the computer will verify that I captured your name properly and vice-versa. If we disagree on the band we used, or the mode we claimed to have used, or something else, the computer program that analyzes these logs makes a determination for who is right.
It is a competition so there are points. Usually, things work like this: You get a certain number of points for each QSO you make. Sometimes the number of points depends on how far the contact is from you. For example, the CQ Magazine Worked All Prefixes (WPX) contest gives you three points for talking to a different continent on the 10m/15m/20m bands and six points for talking to a different continent on the 40m/80m/160m bands. Working someone within your continent (but different country) yields a different number of points, and so on.
This would all be very tedious if we didn’t have computers! But, computers sort this bit out easily. What makes things even more complicated is a typical contest has “multipliers.” Your multipliers are tallied based on some criteria like the number of countries you talked with. Remember the typical goal of a contest is to have you talk to as many people as you can (maximize QSOs) in as many places as you can (maximize your multipliers).
Your final score will be the total number of points you earned by doing QSOs multiplied by the number of multipliers you accumulated according to the contest rules. Again, as a participant, you don’t need to know any of this. The computer figures it all out. All you have to do is make QSOs and have fun.
Why Contest?
Some people honestly think they can win the contest. Though as the numbers showed thousands enter and only a handful win accolades. So, in reality, the number of people who enter for this reason is small.
Most enter the contest because they like making QSOs. Given that there are thousands of people on the air participating there is ample chance to talk to somebody. And making QSOs can have other benefits if you’re competitive with the hobby. If you like collecting awards like the ARRL’s Worked All States (WAS) or DX Century Club (DXCC) then a contest is a wonderful way to find all those stations you need for your award. It is not uncommon, for example, to have a small station with a hard-working operator complete DXCC in a weekend.
Another reason to get on during a contest is that this is a perfect opportunity to do some assessment of your station. Say you’ve just put up a new antenna. How is it working? With thousands of people on the air from all over the world, you can quickly determine if you can hear Japan or talk to South Africa. If you can’t hear them (but you find out your buddy who lives down the block did) then you know you have work to do.
Like road races for runners, some people contest just to see if they can do better than they did last year. Phrases like “personal best” for a higher score than ever before are commonly heard. And, with all these stations on the air, “all-time new one” (ATNO) is often heard when a station works a country for the very first time. There are little victories along the way. Pay attention and bask in their glory!
There’s also something fun about seeing your callsign in CQ Magazine, or on the results page for an ARRL contest. Who doesn’t like seeing their name in lights? And there is always bragging rights with your friends. You may not have been top dog in the All-Band-High-Power category, but if you got a higher score than your buddy then there still something to crow about.
People contest because making QSOs is fun, and there’s no better time to make QSOs than when there are thousands of people hopeful of doing the same thing.
Rules Rules Rules
The first thing to do is learn the contest rules. Every contest has a set of rules published and it is important to understand what is expected of you. Knowing the rules makes it fun for you and for others. (Not knowing the rules leads to embarrassing gaffs.)
What will the rules tell you? Here is a list of typical things outlined by the rules:
When is the contest? There will be a list of dates and times.
What are the categories for the contest? These contests are typically not just one big category where everybody competes. It wouldn’t be fair to pit an operator running 5 Watts QRP against a station running 1500 Watts! So, contest sponsors create categories. Some typical categories are:
Power: High Power (HP) for greater than 100 Watts, Low Power (LP) for 100 Watts or less, and QRP for a maximum of 5 Watts.
Bands: All Bands (that are legal for the contest), or a single band. You can typically compete by operating in a single band (like 20m) and then you’ll be pitted against anybody else who limited themselves to that one band.
Mode: Single Side Band (SSB), CW, data modes like RTTY, or All Modes.
Time limit: Some contests allow you to operate within a limited time (such as 12 hours instead of 24 or 48 hours). If you choose this category you’ll only be competing against others using that same limit.
Assisted: This is a little complicated, so I’m going to defer to a later post I’ll do about being assisted. The answer to “Assisted” is either “yes” or “no.” Don’t use anything to help find contacts or decode QSO information and the answer is “no.”
Where are you located? The contest sponsor will compare your score to others in the same geographical region.
The exchange. This one is key. What information are you required to give out and capture during your QSO? Here are some examples of exchange information from contests:
Your name. This is your first name or nickname, like “Scott” or “Jack”)
Your state, which is often used in domestic contests.
Your CQ Zone. The world is divided by CQ Magazine into 40 different zones. We are in zone 5 here in the Northeast.
A serial number. You have a running counter and you give out the number as your exchange. So, your first contact gets 1, your second contact gets 2, and so on.
Something more complicated. The ARRL Sweepstakes contest is particularly tedious demanding: a serial number, a “precedence” indicating your power level (like “Q” for QRP or “A” for low power), your callsign, the last two digits of the year you were first licensed, and your ARRL section from their official list. Ugh. You have to really want to make contacts to be in this contest!
There are other rules about how to submit your log that I’ll cover later.
Readying Your Station
Looking ahead, we need to be able to produce an accurate record to present to the contest sponsor of our activities. That means we need to have the following in each QSO record:
Date and time of the contact.
The frequency and/or band used.
The mode (SSB, CW, etc.) used.
The other station’s callsign!
The signal report for the contact (always 59 or 599 please!)
The exchange information.
Just a note about signal reports. In a contest, people want to go as fast as they can. So by convention signal reports are always 59 or 599. In fact, in CW that 599 is shortened to 5NN. We want to spend the smallest amount of time sending and receiving information we can.
While it is possible to enter some of these contests using only a piece of paper for your log, it is impractical for any serious effort. You need a computer that is running a logging program that supports this contest. Further, your computer should be talking to your radio capturing the frequency, band, and mode information automatically. The computer knows the time, and it learns these other things from the radio. The signal report is preprogrammed in. So, the only thing interesting that you need to capture is the callsign and exchange information. Learn your logging program, how to set it up so that it operates in a manner described above, and know how to capture exchange information for each QSO. If you goof any of this up then your log will be worthless.
Once you have a computer, logging program, and radio set up properly, you should ensure that the rest of your station is as squared-away. Get a comfortable chair and put it and your work surface at the right height. Get a proper set of headphones, a foot pedal to key your transmitter, and a CW keyer system that works with your computer to send. Preprogram the memories of your voice and CW keyers to things important to the contest (like your callsign and exchange information).
This last bit is for CW operators. Modern contest logging programs can run everything from the keyboard. Preprogrammed CW keyer memories have your callsign, the signal report and exchange information, and can even receive from the computer the callsign of the station you are working and send that. A well-constructed station enables you to go through the whole contest without touching your paddles.
A voice keyer (often built-in to our modern transceivers) can record your voice and play it back over the air with a press of a button. It is especially handy to have your callsign preprogrammed. You will say your callsign thousands of times over a contest weekend. You can lose your voice quite easily with that kind of workout. Using the voice keyer saves your voice and significantly reduces fatigue.
You should have read the rules and selected the operating category you wish to compete in. If you are using “low power” then make sure your output is less than or equal to that limit, for example.
Making a Contest QSO
Like so many things in life, there is a protocol to be observed and behavior to be learned. Here is a typical interaction:
A station far away calls “CQ” or perhaps “CQ contest” and gives their callsign.
You (and dozens of others) transmit your callsign. Say it once clearly and quickly. Use standard phonetics. For example, I would say “November Echo One Romeo Delta.” Don’t use weird stuff like “Nobody Else One Radical Daemon.” Stations are trying to work as quickly as possible so don’t make them have to do any additional work decoding what they hear. Stick to standard phonetics.
The far away station chooses one of these callers. It will respond with the callsign and exchange information. There won’t be an “over” or “back to you” spoken. They will just say the minimum and then listen.
Respond. Do not give your callsign again. Do not say their callsign. Just give the exchange information. So, in the CQ WW SSB contest I would say “595.” That’s it. That’s what they are expecting. Anything more makes them think, which is bad.
The other station will ask for a repeat if they need one. Again, just give the exchange information and nothing more unless the other station specifically asks for it.
The end of the encounter happens when the other station says “QRZ” or does a new CQ.
That’s it. If you keep everything to a minimum then everybody is happy. I will sometimes give my exchange and then say “thanks”, but even that is too much in some circumstances. In this social context, less is more.
While you’ve been trying to make this contact you should also be updating the data entry fields of your log. Once the contact has finished and is successful then commit the log entry and clear the fields, readying yourself for the next QSO.
Search and Pounce Versus Running
There are two terms you might hear when talking about operating in a contest. They are “search and pounce” and “running.” Search and pounce is just as it sounds. You tune your radio until you find somebody you walk to talk to, you “pounce” on them by giving your callsign, you complete the interaction, then repeat the process by tuning the radio in search of another station. Small stations, and especially those new to contesting, will do “search and pounce.” It is much easier than “running.”
Running means sitting on a frequency and calling CQ. You solicit contacts and work pileups. In practical terms, given many contests have hundreds or thousands of participants, if you don’t have a big station then you’ll never be able to hold a frequency. Somebody bigger will just start calling CQ over the top of you, and nobody will hear you again. Running also takes some skills to do data entry quickly, correct errors quickly, and sort out other problems like garbled exchanges, operators who don’t know the rules (don’t be that person!), and more. I recommend getting comfortable doing search and pounce before you attempt running.
BIC
“BIC” is a somewhat crude term that means “butt in chair.” You can’t make QSOs unless you are sitting at your radio operating. If you are eating, then you are not BIC. If you go to the bathroom you are not BIC. Certainly, if you sleep (the horrors!) during a part of the contest then you don’t have your butt in the chair. Serious contesters will operate nearly all of a 48-hour contest. They will begin Friday night and sleep only 90 minutes on Sunday morning before the bands open to Europe. It sounds extreme and ridiculous, but that’s just part of what it takes to win.
If you are new to contesting I recommend that you take some breaks, review what you are doing, determine if you need improvements. Mostly, though, if it stops being fun you should probably stop. The point is to learn contesting, make QSOs, and have fun. Don’t make butt in chair time drudgery.
I will say this, though, when I see my score published and I see how close I came to doing much better (score-wise), I often wish I had operated more. This is a great incentive for your next contest. Build up to it and you will enjoy it more.
When the Contest is Over
One option is to do nothing. You aren’t required to turn over your log to the contest sponsor. If you were only in the contest to make QSOs (perhaps you were chasing an award) then you’ve accomplished your goal. You don’t owe anybody anything. Lots of people participate in the contest but don’t submit their log.
But, if you want to “officially” be in the contest then you need to submit a score. Most contest sponsors want your log in a particular shape called Cabrillo. (Cabrillo is pronounced “cab-re-oh” as best I can tell.) This is not the standard interchange format used by loggers called ADIF. It is different.
Contest logging programs like N1MM+ for Windows will convert your log to the proper format. Most general purpose logging programs will not do this. It is important to figure this out before the contest!
If you are a Macintosh user then you can use a logging program called MacLoggerDX to do your logging, and my program Cabconverter to convert your log into the proper Cabrillo format. Other solutions are available for Windows, Linux, and the Macintosh. Shop around.
Contest sponsors are beginning to demand that logs be submitted quickly, sometimes within a week of the conclusion of the contest. Read the contest rules so you don’t miss the deadline.
Even More
Oddly enough, there’s, even more to know about contesting. For example, it is sometimes possible to start the contest in one category, but submit your log with a different one. Perhaps I’ll cover this (and much more) in a future installment.
I’m going to try to put out a little something once a month saying which contests are coming up and how best to prepare for them. In the meantime: see you in the contest!
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