Contesting Your Way to DX Success
Are you a beginning DXer, working toward the basic DX awards such as DXCC or CQ DX? Or perhaps you’re a little more experienced and you’ve decided to chase Worked All Zones (WAZ), 5-Band WAZ, the DXCC Challenge, or even one of the many other specialty DX awards offered by various organizations around the world (and regularly featured in CQ’s Awards column). If you’re not satisfied with your current results and want to improve upon them, maybe you should try contesting.
Some operators feel contests are just a bunch of noise that interrupts their ham radio weekends, but in fact, they serve several very useful purposes: The increased activity contests provide shows regulators that the amateur bands are in fact being used and we don’t need to have our allocations cut; experimenters use contests to try new equipment and techniques, and award chasers use them to help in their quest to work “new ones” in pursuit of those goals.
My Introduction
In the mid ’70s, I was basically a confirmed 75-meter ragchewer who would work the occasional DX station if one happened to break in to our group. At that time, I had been largely inactive for 10 years, even to the point of having to retake my FCC exams. As it happened at the time, I walked into a radio store in Dallas with the intention of finding a 3/16-inch microphone plug. I met enthusiastic contester N5AU, and walked out with a lasting interest in contesting and DXing.
At the time I started serious DXing, I had no station. Equipment, yes, but as an
