Contest Participation Remains High
The “COVID-19 bump” in contest participation continues through the end of 2021. In the most recent running of the oldest domestic contest, the 2021 ARRL November CW Sweepstakes had 1,422 logs submitted. This is near the participation of the previous COVID-affected year of 2020 which had 1,439 logs. In the pre-COVID era, CW Sweepstakes participation had been slowly rising, increasing from 1,237 logs in 2016 to 1,295 in 2019.
In the largest international DX contest, 9,775 logs have been submitted for the October 2021 edition of the CQ World Wide DX SSB contest. This exceeds the 2020 bump to 9,241 entries. Both are well past the 7,500-8,600 logs received in the 2011-2019 era.
In the pre-pandemic years of 2011-2019, hams from 168 to 186 DXCC countries submitted logs for CQWW SSB contest. Travel restrictions in 2020 sharply reduced DXpedition activity — even to common contest superstations in the Caribbean — resulting in only 154 DX entities submitting logs for CQWW SSB that year. In fall of 2021, DXpedition activity picked up slightly, with logs submitted from 161 entities.
First announced in 2020, Australian 2x1 contest calls hit the airwaves for the first time in CQWW SSB 2021. Sixty of these 2x1 contest-specific calls, ranging alphabetically from “VJ2A” to “VL6W,” submitted logs for CQWW SSB, compared to 42 who used the more traditional 2x2 or 2x3 calls. The availability of
