CW Spectrum Usage and Speed in CQWW CW
The spike in contest activity that began in mid-March 2020 continues into the fall season. For example, the WAE (Worked All Europe) SSB contest in early September had 1,278 logs submitted, up 34% from last year’s 953 logs. The month of November has both the oldest CW contest, the ARRL Sweepstakes, and the most popular CW contest, the CQ World Wide (CQWW). I anticipate record participation in both of these this year, so this month I will look in detail at CW spectrum usage in CQWW CW 2019, and make some predictions for where the action will be in 2020.
CW Spectrum Usage in CQWW CW
s your recollection of contesting in years past that you only have to dial up and down 10 kHz on a band to work all the big stations in “kilowatt alley”? The situation is very different today in a big contest like CQWW — there are stations calling CQ TEST over much broader swaths of each band.
To illustrate how CW contesters used the bands in 2019 CQWW CW, I analyzed the public logs (which you can view at the <> website —hover over “Logs”, then click on “public logs”) to see which ones had accurate frequencies for each QSO. This is easier to do with logs in recent years that are more likely to list the frequency and not just the band —in particular, in 2019
