so i finally sat down and did a proper contest run this past CQ WW SSB and wow i had no idea what i was missing. ive been licensed about 18 months and mostly just done ragchews and a little SOTA but something about the pileups and the rhythm of contest operating just clicked for me. ran about 6 hours on 20m and managed just over 200 QSOs which i know isnt anything impressive but for me it felt incredible.

the part i wasnt expecting was how much it helped my operating skills. like i had to really learn to listen through QRM and my exchange got tighter just from repetition. also realized my antenna situation needs work badly - kept losing contacts to stations running beams while im sitting here with a dipole strung between two trees.

anyway i got the bug now. already looking at ARRL Sweepstakes next month and trying to figure out if i should try CW Sweepstakes even though my code is still pretty rough. also been poking around the SOTA summits list thinking about doing an activation during a contest weekend to stack both at once. anyone done that? does it actually work out or is it more chaos than its worth?

also genuinely curious what upcoming events people are looking forward to. feels like contest season is just ramping up and i want to plan better this time instead of just stumbling into CQ WW the night before

200 QSOs on a dipole in your first real contest effort is honestly really solid, dont undersell that. CQ WW is one of the biggest on the calendar so the bands are wall to wall and it can be overwhelming if you're not used to it. the fact that you stuck with it for 6 hours says a lot.

on the SOTA during contest thing - yeah people do it, its called a combined activation and some folks specifically try to hit multiplier summits during things like CQ WW or ARRL DX. the tricky part is you're usually running QRP from a summit and the contest guys running a kilowatt into a yagi are not always thrilled to slow down for you. that said if you call CQ yourself and let people come to you its pretty workable. i did an activation during ARRL Field Day one year just kind of by accident and got a ton of contacts because everyone was hunting for weird grid squares and state multipliers.

for Sweepstakes i'd say go for the CW side even with rough code, everyone was rough once and the SS exchange is so repetitive you'll have it memorized within the first hour. just slow it down and people are generally patient during SS, its kind of a more relaxed vibe than CQ WW.

yeah Field Day is where i got hooked too, different kind of contest obviously but theres something about being out in a field with a generator and a bunch of antennas that just gets you. my club does a big setup every year and even the non-contesters in the group end up glued to the radio by sunday morning.

whats your logging software situation? if youre just using paper or something basic now might be a good time to look at N1MM before sweepstakes. took me an embarrassingly long time to start using it properly but once it clicks it makes everything smoother, the dupe checking alone is worth it