CONTESTING
Plus: ARRL September VHF Contest; Scandinavian Activity Contest; CQWW RTTY DX Contest; Contest Tips on the WSJT-X Digital Modes
The fall contest season opens with a bang in September, with something for everyone. Regional contests headline the early weekends, with phone followed by CW events. Then the CQ World Wide RTTY DX contest closes out the month with the popular “everyone-work-everyone” format on the last weekend of September.
Each mode is featured on a different weekend in September. The new World Wide Digi DX Contest on August 31 through September 1 focused on WSJT-X modes FT4 and FT8. With more experience, participants in the Digi contest were expected to experience less confusion than during the CQWW VHF contest, which took place just five days after general release of FT4. (There were test versions earlier for practice.)
The 60th JARL All Asia (AA) phone contest is on the bands during the first full weekend of the month, September 7-8. The 65th annual DARC Worked All Europe DX (WAEDC) phone contest follows on the next weekend, September 14-15, for a full 48 hours. While the AA contest favors U.S. stations located on the west coast, the WAEDC favors those on the east coast, so there exists a sort of parity. Both the AA and WAEDC are WRTC2022 qualifying events, so expect a bump in activity.
Overlapping the AA Phone competition is the IARU Region 1 Phone Field Day that was discussed in the May column at pages 84-85. This may be of particular interest to operators in the eastern U.S. Similarly, the WAEDC goes up against the ARRL
