Contesting: Why and How for the Beginner

More than anything else, a radio contest gives you an opportunity to learn what your station can do. In a few hours of operation you can confirm the possibility of communicating with dozens or even hundreds of different stations. You can get an idea of whether your antenna works better in some directions than others. And by listening to the results as other stations call or work the same stations you are calling you can compare the effectiveness of your station with others. How is this different from non-contest days? Contest contacts are brief, you will make many contacts, and other stations will want to contact you, even if your signal is hard to hear or your code speed is slow.

You will also learn some things about the fascinating peculiarities of radio wave propagation. If you start listening on the 10, 15, or 20 meter band you are likely to find that on the highest band where you can hear anybody you may hear very few stations, but many of them will be far away and they may hear you easily, even though you cannot hear other stations they contact who may be much closer to your location. If you hear activity on 10 meters or 15 meters during the afternoon the signals will probably disappear after sunset, but signals on the next lowest band will persist until later. If you operate late at night you may make contacts over surprisingly long distances on the lower bands, 40 and 80 meters. Around sunrise or sunset you may find strong signals coming from the north or south, from stations in the "grey line" zone where the sun is also rising or setting. You may observe these phenomena any day, not just during a contest, but a contest often brings a "dead" band to life -- for instance, "everyone knows" that the 10 meter band is useless when the 11 year sunspot cycle is at its low point, but on a contest weekend serious multi-multi stations (multi-operator, multi-transmitter efforts) will keep on calling CQ even on a "dead" band, and if there is any possibility of the band opening you will hear signals coming through.

The ARRL Sweepstakes contests (c.w. the first full weekend of November and phone the third full weekend of November) are excellent opportunities to get into contesting. There will be many participants, not all of them hot-shot serious competitors, and many modest stations with simple antennas and relatively low power will be as eager to contact you as you may be to contact them. On c.w., especially, you can probably count on working almost every station you can hear if you have an average installation; as a rough rule you can generally consider a 10 watt c.w. signal to be as effective as a 100 watt voice signal.

For an easy start, write down and rehearse a few times exactly what you will send as your contest exchange. The fastest senders tend to concentrate at the lowest frequencies in the band, and that is where the band is most crowded. So listen for slow speed signals on the highest frequency where you hear activity in the band. Then listen to several contacts by a station calling CQ before you call him. That way you will know ahead of time what he will be sending when he comes back to your call. Timing is important, send your call as soon as you hear the other station end his transmission. Send just your call and don't try to send it fast -- the other station will slow down to your speed. If you don't catch all the information don't hesitate to send "PSE RPT QRS" ("please repeat and send more slowly").

Once you have made a few contacts you will begin to feel more confident, and if you put in a couple of hours you may find your code speed improves significantly. If you take some time off and get on again later you will find new stations you haven't heard before, and they will want to add you to their logs as well. Also, you may find yourself quite popular if you have been off for a long period and then return to operate during the last hour of a contest. Even if calling CQ did not produce many replies early in the contest it may work well for you near the end.

During the phone weekend you'll also find your operating ability will improve -- even though Morse code is not an issue on phone, there is skill involved in phone operation, and you will feel more confidence in your timing and the operation of your radio after a stint of contest operation.

One of the nice things about the Sweepstakes contest is that operators keep track of their operating time and submit it with their logs. The contest rules allow up to 24 hours of operation during the 30 hour contest period, but since the results posted on the ARRL web page will include the number of hours operated, you can compare how you did with other stations who only operated for a few hours. If you are not planning a 24 hour operation you can easily do all your logging on paper, you don't need to have a computer logging program. Paper logs can be converted to electronic form on-line, or you can submit a paper log.

The announcement of the November 2009 sweepstakes is on page 87 of October QST, and the "This Month in Contesting" column on p. 85 of November QST is a good summary of the contest operating procedures. The contest rules are online at http://www.arrl.org/contests/rules/2009/novss.html.

To prepare, you should go to the ARRL website and print out Log, Entry, and Dupe sheet forms. These are all available at http://www.arrl.org/contests/forms/. Links to the log and entry form sheets are on the "ARRL November Sweepstakes" section of the page. The dupe sheet is not required unless you will submit a log showing more than 500 contacts, but it's a worthwhile aid to help avoid making duplicate contacts with a station you already worked. The dupe sheet form is in the Field Day section of the web page.

After the contest, consider submitting your log even if you only operated for a short time and made only a few contacts. In 2008 N1AW was the only operator in the Western Massachusetts ARRL section to submit a log in the QRP class, and he got a certificate for first place in the section and class for a two hour, 6 QSO effort. The contest results posted on the ARRL web page show that almost 200 logs were submitted for operations of four hours or less in 2008. Paper logs are accepted (see the rules) or you can convert your log to an electronic Cabrillo-formatted using the web application at http://www.b4h.net/cabforms.