so i finally got my general ticket back in march and ive been mostly doing casual rag chewing on 40m and some FT8 when the bands are being moody. a buddy at my club keeps telling me i should jump into CQ WW SSB this october and i guess im just nervous about it because i dont really know what im doing in a contest environment. like i know the basics — you exchange signal reports and zones — but everything else kind of confuses me still.

also is ARRL Field Day even comparable in terms of intensity or is that a whole different beast? i did Field Day with the club last june and it was chaotic but fun. trying to figure out if i should treat CQ WW the same way or actually study up more before jumping in. and has anyone been doing any SOTA activations to build up operating confidence before the big contests? someone mentioned that helps but i dunno if its just more of a different skill set entirely.

anyway any advice welcome, even just like what logging software to have ready would help

CQ WW is definitely a step up from Field Day in terms of raw intensity, especially if you're operating from home solo versus being at a club site with people around helping out. but honestly the best thing you can do is just jump in and not worry about your score the first time. seriously nobody expects a new general to be running stations at 150 QSOs per hour or whatever.

for logging just grab N1MM+ and watch a youtube walkthrough before the contest weekend, its free and pretty much the standard. the zone exchange trips people up at first but after like 20 contacts it clicks. CQ Zone 4 or 5 for most of us in the US and you just kinda learn the others as you hear them.

and yeah SOTA is a totally different vibe — more about the activation itself than contest operating speed — but it does build confidence for sure, especially working pile-ups from the summit side. i'd say do both, they scratched completely different itches for me

dont stress too much about CQ WW being your first real contest, i did it about two years into the hobby and just treated it like a big operating weekend. yeah its loud and fast and sometimes guys dont even say their callsign clearly but you pick it up. one thing that helped me was just searching and pouncing at first instead of trying to hold a frequency and call CQ — way less pressure and you can work at your own pace.

also FT8 experience wont totally translate but at least you already know that propagation is everything, so watching the bands in the days before and seeing whats opening up toward europe or japan will give you an idea of what to expect. 15m has been pretty good lately with the solar cycle doing its thing so hopefully that holds into october.