Contesting… ARRL DX CW
This past weekend I had the opportunity to spend a few hours in the ARRL DX CW contest. If you are unfamiliar with the world of ham radio contests, perhaps this post will give you an overview.
This is one of the major Morse code contests in which ham radio operators attempt to make as many contacts as possible in a weekend. In this contest, contacts are valid between US/Canadian hams and those outside of US/Canada (aka "DX"). Three points are awarded for each contact. To calculate the total score, US hams multiply the points by the number of countries for each ham radio "band".
My score summary is shown below.
144,480 points with 302 contacts across the 1.8 MHz, 3.5 MHz, 7 MHz, 14 MHz and 21 MHz amateur radio bands. My country count is also shown for each band. You can see that on the 14 MHz band (also known as "20 meters") I had 132 contacts in 68 countries.
Here is my multiplier screen:
For each "country" (as defined by the ARRL) you’ll see a series of boxes. For example, PY (Brazil) shows three boxes colored red indicating that I made contacts with Brazil on three ham bands during the contest.
In roughly 13 hours, I had made over 302 contacts. How does this stack up? That’s a tough question. To be fair, you should only compare my score against other hams in my same contest class… That is against other US hams who are also:
- "single ops" (as opposed to "multi-ops" which have multiple operators at a station)
- "low power" (I only use 100 watts. I don’t use an amplifier - nor do I operate at very low power levels - 5 watts or less).
- "assisted" (in this class, hams are allowed to access networks which give the current frequency of needed DX stations).
With a better antenna system (especially on the lower frequencies), some decent sunspots to help with radio propagation, an amplifier and more time in the chair, my score would have been much better. However, I had some fun and I managed to "work" as many contacts as I did in the fall contest with half the time. Improving my station and operating skills is really the goal and with that in mind… the goal was reached.
…-.-