8-1.           THE ART OF CONTESTING

Contesting is a grueling dog-eat-dog competition that requires a fairly husky station, stamina, and dedication to be the best you can be. You can participate in a contest whether or not you decide to formally submit an application and your logs. There are easily over 2000 contests per year - four contests per week! Besides magazines and publications, one of the best sources of contest activity is LA9HW, Jan Almedal’s Contest Calendar  Pages at URL:

http://home.online.no/~janalme/hammain.html

Jan’s pages lists contests by month and in most cases includes the rules for report exchanges, application, and classes of stations in the contest. Some contests have categories for 100 Watt and QRP stations, but a good antenna is a must if you intend to sit on a frequency and invite stations to call you. As the caller, you can roam the bands and work as many entities (DX, Prefix, States, etc.) as you can. One of the best ways to get into contesting is to be the caller for a few contests and roam the bands and do a search and work as many QSO’s and multipliers as you can. From this you will soon learn the rhythm and protocol of contests.

When you get proficient as the callee, you can try a casual approach to being the callor where you sit on a frequency and let folks come to you. Next is finding the local contest club, field-day group, or big gun contesters and participate as a full-fledged contester. With these groups, you can learn the contest secrets of the ages, as these folks have been at it for years and know all the tricks and techniques.