so i've been licensed about 8 months now and i keep hearing everyone talk about CQ WW like its the superbowl of ham radio and i finally decided to just jump in this year instead of watching from the sidelines. i've done a couple of the smaller club contests but nothing on this scale and honestly im a little intimidated by how many stations are going to be on at once.

my setup is pretty basic, ic-7300 into a dipole up about 30 feet, nothing fancy. i know im not gonna win anything but i'd like to at least make a decent showing and maybe work some DX i haven't gotten before. my question is more about the strategy side of things - like do you just park on a frequency and call CQ or do you hunt around for multipliers? and how do you even keep up with the logging when things get busy, i tried doing it by hand at first and that was a disaster.

also someone mentioned SOTA activators sometimes count during contests but i couldn't figure out if that was actually a thing or if they were just messing with me. anyway any advice welcome, this is my first real crack at a major one.

oh man you're in for a treat, CQ WW is absolutely addictive once you get hooked. first thing - get N1MM+ or Log4OM set up before the contest starts, logging by hand during a pile-up is basically impossible and you'll miss exchanges. N1MM is free and the learning curve isn't bad, there are youtube videos that walk you through setup in like 20 minutes.

for strategy at your level i'd honestly just do S&P (search and pounce) for the first few hours and get a feel for the exchange and how the logging software works before you try to hold a run frequency. the exchange for CQ WW is just signal report and CQ zone so its pretty simple to get the hang of. zone 3 or 4 if youre in the US, just look it up on cqzone.org before you start.

as for SOTA during contests, yeah activators can count but they're just regular contacts unless there's a specific overlay or combination event going on. don't stress about that part, just work em if you hear em. good luck this weekend, 40m and 15m should be great if the bands cooperate.

dont overthink it honestly. i remember my first CQ WW i sat there for like 20 minutes before making my first contact because i was nervous about the exchange. just dive in, worst case you mess up the exchange and the other station asks you to repeat, no big deal at all, everyone was new once.

the ic-7300 is a solid radio and a dipole at 30 feet will get you plenty of contacts especially on 40m at night. youre not gonna work every rare DX station but you'll be surprised what you can pull in. my first contest with similar setup i worked something like 40 countries which felt incredible at the time. have fun with it thats the whole point