so i finally decided to actually sit down and do a real contest this year instead of just listening to all the pile-ups and wondering what's going on. picked CQ WW SSB because it falls on a weekend i have off and my antenna situation is decent enough i think — got a dipole up about 30 feet for 40m and a vertical for 20/15 that i threw together last spring.

my main question is just... where do you even start? like do i just pick a frequency and start calling CQ or do i tune around and answer other peoples calls? ive heard people talk about running vs SandP but honestly i dont fully understand when you'd do one vs the other. also how does the exchange work exactly, i know its signal report and zone but im not sure how to figure out my own zone number.

any advice welcome, even the basic stuff. i know its probably obvious to most of you but i've been licensed about 8 months and this would be my first real contest attempt

welcome to the addiction, haha. ok so honestly for your first time just do search and pounce the whole weekend, dont even try to run a frequency. tune across the band, find someone calling CQ contest, give them your call, and when they send you the exchange just reply back with 59 and your zone. for CQ WW your zone is CQ zone not ITU zone, and if youre in the US most of us are in zone 3, 4, or 5 depending where you are — there's a map on the CQ WW website that takes like two seconds to look up.

running a frequency is great when youre getting a lot of rate but as a new station you'll spend most of your time fighting QRM and losing the frequency anyway so dont stress about it. just work as many unique callsigns and zones as you can and have fun. the zones are actually the fun part because you start recognizing prefixes and figuring out where people are from. JA is Japan, UA9 is Siberia, stuff like that. log everything even if you think you got the call wrong, you can sort it out later.

oh also dont forget to get N1MM or some logging software set up before the weekend, trying to do it in a spreadsheet or paper log is rough when things get busy. N1MM is free and once you get the hang of it it basically handles the dupe checking and multiplier counting for you which takes a lot of stress off. there are youtube videos on setting it up for CQ WW specifically, thats how i learned it my first time.

and dont worry too much about your score. seriously just have fun with it. i still remember my first contest and i was absolutely hooked after like the first hour even though my total at the end was pretty embarrassing compared to the big guns