The CQWW Fills the Bands — Again!
If there is any doubt that you’ve seen the last of the CW glory days, don’t give up hope just yet. All one needs to do is to listen to the bands during a CQWW CW contest and you’ll discover that our cherished mode is still alive and well. It was no different in the running of the 73rd CQWW. The bands were jam-packed from end-toend with contest activity; 20 and 15 meters experiencing activity well above 14/21.100 MHz.
Of course, another measure of activity is the number of logs we receive. On CW, 8,613 logs were received, bringing the “both modes” total for 2021 to 17,720 entries — a new record for the CQWW. These logs represent over 9.6M (million) total QSOs or an average of 522 contacts per log. The numbers are simply staggering.
One of my favorite parts of this job is reading your soapbox comments. Believe it or not, I read them all! You can do so for yourself by checking out <cqww.com/results>. Here’s just a representative sample, reflecting the enthusiasm and excitement created by the CQWW each year:
“This was my first CQWW in 62 years of hamming! It was fun to see what could be done with low power and very modest antennas.” –K7ZX
“Every QSO is a sip of joy when made with 5 watts.”
