so ive been licensed for about 8 months now (general) and kept hearing people talk about CQ WW and Field Day and SOTA and honestly it all kind of blurs together. i did tune into Field Day this past summer and made a few contacts from a club setup but i was basically just pressing the button when someone told me to so i dont really feel like that counts lol

CQ WW is coming up and i keep seeing people on here getting excited about it and i want to actually try to participate properly this time, like from my own station. i have a IC-7300 and a dipole up about 30 feet, nothing fancy. is CQ WW a good starting point or is it kind of overwhelming for someone who hasnt really done a proper contest solo before? also whats the difference between CQ WW SSB and CW — i mean i know one is phone and one is morse but do they have different dates or is it the same weekend

also somebody mentioned SOTA to me at a hamfest and that seems like a completely different thing? like hiking with radios? is that considered a contest or more of an award program thing. sorry if this is a dumb question im just trying to figure out what to focus on

not a dumb question at all, this stuff is genuinely confusing when you first get into it because they really are pretty different animals. CQ WW SSB and CW are separate weekends, usually SSB is the last full weekend of October and CW follows a month later in November, so you actually get two shots at it. the exchange is simple — signal report and CQ zone — so its not a bad one to start with honestly. your 7300 and a dipole can do more than you think, especially if 15 or 10 meters open up.

SOTA is totally different, its an award program where people activate summits and you get points based on the summit height, and chasers (people at home) also log contacts. theres no set contest weekend, its ongoing all year. some people treat certain events like the SOTA on the Air days as a mini contest but its really more of a community thing. worth looking into separately once you get the contest bug sorted out.

for your first solo go at CQ WW i'd just set a modest goal, maybe aim for 100 contacts or a certain number of zones and see how it goes. running a frequency your first time out is tough so search and pounce is probably the move — just tune around and call people. have fun with it

yeah what he said about SOTA is right, its kind of its own whole world. i got into it last year and now i spend more time strapping a radio to my backpack than i do sitting at my desk honestly. very different vibe from contesting but both are great. there's a website called SOTAwatch where you can see whos activating and when, worth bookmarking even if youre just going to chase from home at first.

the ARRL also has a bunch of contests throughout the year that are a bit more beginner friendly than CQ WW just because the pool is more domestic focused — things like the ARRL Sweepstakes or the 10 meter contest in December which can be really fun if the band cooperates. just saying theres a lot of options, you dont have to jump straight into the deep end with CQ WW if it feels like too much