DXCC through Contesting + LoTW
Even casual contesters can easily improve their DXCC counts by participating in a few international contests. CQ Magazine’s major “World Wide” contests provide a great opportunity to “work some new ones”, even when the propagation indices are terrible. (CQ WW CW for Morse Code enthusiasts and CQ WW SSB for those who prefer “phone”).
I guess that I would consider myself to be both a casual contester (rarely spend more than 30 hrs in a contest and only get into ~ 5 events per year) and a casual DXer (I don’t lose sleep over my DXCC totals)…
Waiting for a flight at the Des Moines International Airport, I’m taking a look at the DXCC impact of my recent CQ WW SSB and CQ WW CW contests.
I have imported my contest logs into DXKeeper, my main PC logbook. I also sync this log with my PocketPC PDA logbook, MobileLog. With DXKeeper, I can filter QSOs by date… so I can restrict my log to show only my 2008 CQ WW contest QSOs. Then I simply run a report to show the DXCC results.
DXCC worked/confirmed in 2008 CQ World-wide
That’s 130 DXCC entities worked in two contests and already 73 confirmations through the ARRL’s Logbook of the World (LoTW). Besides working many “new ones” by mode, I’ve certainly been improving my DXCC mode/band counts.
Of course, as QSLs continue to arrive and folks submit their logs via LoTW, my confirmations from these contests will continue to rise. You can see that if I was just starting to work towards DXCC in October, I’d already have 73 confirmed without sending a single QSL card! That’s the power of two international contests and LoTW. I’m certain that if I were more serious about contesting I would easily achieve DXCC 100 entities confirmed in a single contest (perhaps a personal goal for a future contest?).
How has this impacted my overall DXCC count?
DXCC prior to 2008 CQ World-wide contests
Prior to this year’s CQ WW contests (above), I had 201 confirmed and on some bands, I had a lot of work to do. Lowband totals are a weak spot towards 5 band DXCC.
DXCC after 2008 CQ WW contests (as of Dec 8th, 2008)
My current all-time DXCC stats are above. Comparing that to the chart immediately above it, you can see that I’ve really made some headway. Only 2 new DXCC entities confirmed via the contests so far, but the improvements are:
| Confirmed | Worked | |
| Mixed | +2 | +4 |
| Phone | +4 | +6 |
| CW | +9 | +15 |
| 160m | +4 | +4 |
| 80m | +9 | +25 |
| 40m | +8 | +8 |
| 20m | +8 | +11 |
| 15m | +5 | +6 |
Good progress in only two contests – and, again, without yet sending a single paper QSL card.
Conclusion
Contesting is a blast and if you are a casual DXer, you’ll have a great time picking up some new ones.
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