CONTESTING
Are you looking to step up your contest efforts in the CQ World-Wide WPX Contests this spring? This month, we take a deep dive into winning strategies for these contests resulting from the unique WPX rules and springtime band conditions.
The WPX contests can trace their roots back to CQ magazine’s monthly single-sideband (SSB) column in 1956. Bob Adams W3SW, editor of the column, promoted the on-air usage of the new SSB mode with a new contest, the CQ World-Wide SSB Contest, that was held in January 1957. The rules shifted in the next several years, and in 1959 the CQ World-Wide SSB contest began using prefixes as multipliers to tie in to CQ’s popular WPX award for prefixes. By 1967, SSB was no longer unique to this contest, and the contest name was changed to “CQ World Wide WPX SSB Contest”, emphasizing the WPX aspect.
The WPX contests have evolved notably since 1967. A separate weekend was added for CW in 1979. In its original form, the WPX Contest allowed working domestic stations for multipliers but not for points. In 1999, the rules were changed to allow domestic QSOs to be worked for 1 point. Recommended reading for the history of WPX rule changes is “History of the CQ WPX Contest” by John Pescatore, K3TN, in the January 2011 CQ magazine. More recent rule changes include a new permanent category for geographically diverse multidistributed stations, and the elimination of a separate Assisted category.
shows the growth in participation in
