so i finally did my first serious contest this past CQ WW SSB weekend and wow i had no idea what i was getting into. ive been licensed for about 8 months, mostly doing rag chews on 40m and a little bit of SOTA stuff when i can get out hiking, but my buddy kept telling me i needed to try a contest at least once so i figured why not.

ended up running about 6 hours total across both days, not all at once obviously, and logged somewhere around 340 QSOs which i know is nothing compared to the serious guys but felt like a lot to me. 20m was absolutely insane saturday afternoon, couldnt even find a clear frequency for a while so i just tuned around and worked whoever i could find a gap with. picked up a bunch of new DXCC entities too which was a nice bonus, never worked japan before and got like 4 or 5 JA stations in a row at one point.

question for people who do this regularly - is ARRL Field Day a totally different vibe? i ask because a local club is already talking about getting organized for it and i want to know if its worth going out with them or if its more of a casual social thing than actual contesting. also any other contests you'd recommend for someone still kinda new to this? i heard the ARRL DX contest is supposed to be good for stateside guys too.

Field Day is honestly a completely different animal from CQ WW. its less about raw score and more about the whole experience of operating portable, usually with a club, eating bad hotdogs and staying up way too late. dont get me wrong the competition is real and some clubs take it very seriously, but theres almost always a welcoming atmosphere for newer folks since clubs genuinely want people to get on the air and try things. i helped run our clubs Field Day setup for three years and we always made a point of letting newer ops sit down and make contacts even if they were slow or made mistakes. its honestly one of the better ways to learn.

for contests to try next, yeah ARRL DX in February is great if you want DX, and from the US side youre only counting multipliers outside the country so theres real motivation to work as far as you can. CQ WPX is another fun one. and if you want something a little lower key to practice on, the state QSO parties are really chill and theres usually one happening almost every weekend somewhere.

340 Qs in your first contest is solid man, seriously dont undersell that. i think i logged like 80 my first time and spent half of it just figuring out how to work the logging software without losing everything lol. what were you using to log, n1mm? that thing has a learning curve but once it clicks its hard to go back to anything else.

the SOTA angle is interesting too - have you looked at SOTA activations during contests? some people do sota+contest combos and its kind of a niche thing but fun if you like hiking anyway. just something to think about for next season.