so im a tech who just upgraded to general back in march and i keep hearing about all these big contests and honestly i dont even know what order to try them in or how they work. like i know CQ WW is supposed to be huge and ARRL Field Day is a thing but i wasnt really licensed yet when field day happened this year so i missed it. somebody at my local club mentioned SOTA and i thought that was a whole different thing? like hiking with radios? is that even a contest or more of an activity thing

anyway i guess my main question is — for someone just getting their feet wet with hf contesting, which one would you actually recommend jumping into first. i have a pretty basic setup, IC-7300 and a wire dipole in the backyard, nothing fancy. i dont want to get completely steamrolled my first time and give up on the whole thing

okay so SOTA and contesting are definitely two different animals even though there's some overlap. SOTA is Summits on the Air, you either hike up a summit and activate it or you chase people who are doing that from home. there are points involved and a whole log system but its more of a program than a contest in the traditional sense. still a blast though and worth getting into separately.

for actual contesting with your setup i'd honestly say start with something like the ARRL Sweepstakes or even one of the state QSO parties before you dive into CQ WW. CQ WW in october/november is massive, like the biggest hf contest of the year, and while you absolutely can participate as a newcomer it can feel overwhelming when you first tune across 20 meters and every single frequency has someone on it. a state QSO party is way more relaxed and you can actually have little conversations sometimes. that said dont let me talk you out of CQ WW either, sometimes just throwing yourself in is the best way to learn

your IC-7300 and dipole will do fine, i've seen guys work a hundred countries in CQ WW with way less than that

yeah field day is its own weird thing honestly, its technically a contest but most clubs treat it more like a public event slash emergency preparedness exercise. you didnt miss the end of the world by missing it, there's always next june. and it's genuinely more fun when you go with a club anyway vs trying to do it solo in my opinion

one thing nobody told me when i started contesting was to just pick one band and stay on it the whole contest your first time. dont try to chase multipliers on every band, just plant yourself somewhere on 20m and work whatever you can. makes the logging way less confusing when you're learning