CONTESTING

I’ve been reporting, month by month, contesting statistics from 2020 that demonstrate a profound spike in contest activity as hams around the world choose to get on the air while staying safe during the COVID-19 pandemic. Several of the largest and most popular contests feature a series of distinct weekends for each of three modes — CW, SSB, and RTTY. I’ve arranged the data in Table 1 to show the 2020 growth by mode for four of these contest series.

The first line of Table 1 shows the increases in 2020 CQ WPX log submittals by mode compared to 2019. Note that the RTTY WPX contest held in February 2020 had a very slight decline in log submittals compared to the same event in 2019. This is the only event in the chart that precedes the world response to the COVID-19 pandemic (note that there were lockdowns in parts of China as early as January 2020), and it’s the only event that did not show a huge rise in participation. The SSB and CW events were in March and May and show substantial increases in activity, with SSB activity spiking a little higher than CW.

The North American QSO Party log submittal growth between summer 2019 and summer 2020 is shown in the second line of for each of the three modes. The NAQP contests take place in July and August