so im a relatively new ham, got my general back in the spring and ive been mostly just doing casual ragchews on 40m and some digital stuff on FT8. but i keep hearing people talk about contest season like its this big deal and honestly i dont really know where to start or what to expect.

like i know CQ WW is coming up and everyone seems to lose their minds over it, and i tried to get on during ARRL Field Day back in june but my club setup was kind of a mess and i spent more time holding an antenna pole than actually operating. i did make a few contacts though which was cool. also been seeing a lot of SOTA activity on the spotting clusters lately which looks interesting but thats more of a portable operating thing right, not really a contest?

anyway my setup is pretty modest, just a dipole up about 25 feet and a used ic-7300 i got a few months ago. should i even bother trying CQ WW or is it just gonna be a wall of noise and frustration for someone at my level? any suggestions on what upcoming events are worth getting on for would be appreciated, trying to figure out what to actually put on my calendar here

oh man do NOT be intimidated by CQ WW, seriously it is one of the best experiences you can have even with a modest setup. yeah the bands get absolutely packed and the big gun stations will be running pile-ups you cant break through, but just working the contest in search and pounce mode is totally valid and you will rack up contacts and new countries faster than almost anything else you can do. your 7300 and a dipole on 40m will do just fine, 40m during CQ WW is wall to wall signals from everywhere.

the thing i tell people new to contesting is just to not stress about your score, especially the first time. just get on, work what you can hear, log it all, and submit your log even if its small. every log submission helps with cross-checking for the big ops. and yeah SOTA is its own separate thing, more of an award program slash operating activity than a traditional contest but there are SOTA specific events like activator weekends that come up. check the SOTA reflector for that stuff. but for your first real contest season id say CQ WW SSB is probably end of october, then CQ WW CW in november if you're into that, and SS is in there too. plenty to keep you busy. just get on and have fun with it

yeah what he said about just jumping in. i remember being in the same spot a couple years ago and honestly field day was what got me hooked even though our club setup was also kind of a disaster lol. the thing about field day is its really more of a club operating event than a pure contest anyway, its designed to practice emergency communication setups so the chaos is kind of the point.

for upcoming stuff i'd also keep an eye on the ARRL Sweepstakes, thats a really fun one for working all the different sections across north america. different vibe from CQ WW which is very DX focused. and if you get into SOTA at some point, even just chasing from home counts and you can pick up a lot of quick contacts that way, the activators are always happy to get in the log