so ive been licensed for about 8 months now and ive been listening to a lot of the big contests on the bands but never actually jumped in. i tried a little bit of field day last summer with my club but i was mostly just watching other people operate and fetching coffee lol. this year i want to actually participate and maybe try CQ WW or one of the ARRL contests on my own.

problem is i dont really know where to start. like do i need special logging software or can i just keep a paper log for something like CQ WW. and how do people even figure out what multipliers they need, i kind of understand the concept but in the heat of the moment it seems overwhelming. also i heard SOTA activations count toward some contests? not totally sure how that works.

any advice would be great, im running a modest setup, just a vertical and 100 watts, nothing fancy. is that even enough to be competitive or am i just gonna be calling CQ into the void the whole time

welcome to the rabbit hole ha. honestly 100w and a vertical is totally fine to get started, you wont be winning any plaques but youll make contacts and thats really the point your first time out. i did my first CQ WW with an end fed and a barefoot 100w rig and still managed a few hundred QSOs over the weekend.

for logging definitely grab N1MM Logger Plus, its free and basically the standard for HF contesting. takes a little while to get set up but there are youtube videos that walk through it and the multiplier tracking is all automatic which makes life a lot easier. paper logging for something like CQ WW would drive you crazy, the dupe checking alone is worth it.

as for SOTA and contests they are kind of separate worlds, SOTA activations dont really feed into the major HF contests directly but there are SOTA specific events and some people chase summits during things like ARRL November sweepstakes for the fun of it. if you want to ease into things maybe try the ARRL DX contest first, the exchange is simpler than CQ WW and there are slightly fewer moving parts. just get on and call people, dont worry about rate or score your first time, just learn the flow of it

yeah what he said about N1MM is spot on. one thing i'd add is dont stress too much about being competitive your first go. field day is honestly still one of the best learning experiences because your club handles a lot of the infrastructure stuff and you can just focus on operating. if your club does it again this year i'd try to get some actual seat time on SSB at minimum, even just an hour or two will teach you more than reading about it.

CQ WW is great but it can be a bit intense for a first solo effort, especially the weekend timing and keeping track of zones. maybe look at some of the smaller state QSO parties too, they're a bit more relaxed and the exchanges are usually just signal report and state, very easy to get the hang of things without feeling like you're drowning