ok so ive been licensed about 14 months now (general) and i keep hearing about CQ WW being this massive deal and i finally decided im just gonna jump in and try it this october. ive done a few small contests, the state QSO party and one ARRL VHF thing but nothing on this scale. from what i understand CQ WW SSB is at the end of october and CQ WW CW is in november, i'm planning to do the SSB one first since my cw is still pretty rough.

my setup is nothing fancy, ic-7300 into a g5rv up about 30 feet so its not ideal but ive worked some dx with it so maybe itll be ok. what i dont really get is the zone multiplier thing, like i understand countries but the zones confuse me a bit. also is it worth submitting a log even if my score is gonna be terrible? i feel kinda embarrassed doing that but someone told me i should anyway.

also totally unrelated but is anyone thinking about ARRL Field Day planning yet, i know its months away but our club is already arguing about the location lol

yes absolutely submit the log, always. even a handful of QSOs helps the log checking process for everyone else and honestly nobody cares what your score is, we were all first timers once. i remember my first CQ WW i think i made like 40 contacts over the whole weekend and thought i was terrible but the next year i had way more fun because i kinda knew what to expect.

the zone thing clicks pretty fast once you're in it, basically ITU zones divide the world up differently than DXCC entities so you can work the same country but different zones count as separate multipliers. there's a zone map on the CQ WW website that's worth printing out or at least having open on a second screen. your 7300 and G5RV combo will work fine honestly, conditions have been decent lately with the solar cycle doing its thing. just search and pounce for a while before you try to run a frequency, especially as a new contester, running is exhausting and you'll learn the exchange format way faster just hunting around first.

SOTA is kind of the opposite end of the spectrum from CQ WW and i love both for totally different reasons haha. CQ WW is just chaos in the best way, i usually do a few hours here and there rather than the full 48 because my family would never forgive me otherwise. as for field day yeah our club starts the location debate basically every january, last year we almost ended up in a parking lot which would have been rough. good luck in CQ WW, just have fun with it