This is the full guide behind the Contest Calendar tool on this site. Open the tool for the dates; read on for how contests work and how to enter your first one.
A contest weekend is the one time of year when the rare stuff comes looking for you. Entities that take months of patience on a normal weekend will be calling CQ, repeatedly, hoping somebody answers. You do not need a tower or an amplifier to take part: a hundred watts, a wire and one evening of search and pounce will typically add several new countries to the log, and the whole thing costs nothing but the time.
What is an amateur radio contest?
An amateur radio contest is a timed event in which stations try to make as many contacts as possible within a set period, exchanging a short standard report. The score is normally the number of valid contacts multiplied by the number of unique multipliers, which may be countries, zones, grid squares or prefixes depending on the rules. Contests are the fastest way to add new countries to a log, because rare stations that are difficult to find on a normal weekend will be on the air and actively calling.
The multiplier is what makes the scoring interesting. Two hundred contacts spread across forty countries will usually beat four hundred contacts made entirely within your own continent, so the game is not simply about rate. It rewards operators who go looking for the unusual, which is exactly the habit that builds a DXCC total.
The exchange, and why every contest has one
The exchange is the information the two stations pass to each other, and it is what makes the contact valid. Every contest defines one in its rules, without exception. If you send the wrong thing, or fail to copy what the other station sent, the contact is removed from your log during checking and in most contests costs you a penalty on top.
There are only a handful of forms in common use, and once you recognise them the rules of a new contest take a minute to read rather than ten.
| Form of exchange | Example | Typically used in |
|---|---|---|
| Report plus serial number | 59 001, counting up | CQ WPX, RSGB series, most European events |
| Report plus CQ zone | 59 14 | CQ World Wide DX |
| Report plus ITU zone | 59 27 | IARU HF World Championship |
| Report plus state, province or section | 59 CT, 59 ON | ARRL events, state QSO parties |
| Report plus power | 59 KW, 59 100 | ARRL International DX, from outside North America |
| Report plus locator | 59 IO91 | VHF and UHF contests |
| Name, age or club number | 59 Ste | Sprints and club events |
The calendar on this site links straight to the official rules of each event, which is where the exchange is set out. Read that page before you switch on, not during your first contact.
The major HF contests of the year
A handful of events dominate the calendar, and they repeat on the same weekends every year. If you learn four of them you will always have something worth switching on for.
| Contest | When | Exchange | Multiplier |
|---|---|---|---|
| CQ World Wide DX, SSB | Last full weekend of October | Report plus CQ zone | Zones and countries, per band |
| CQ World Wide DX, CW | Last full weekend of November | Report plus CQ zone | Zones and countries, per band |
| CQ WPX, SSB then CW | Late March, late May | Report plus serial number | Callsign prefixes |
| ARRL International DX | February, CW; March, SSB | Report plus power, from outside North America | US states and Canadian provinces |
| IARU HF World Championship | Second full weekend of July | Report plus ITU zone | Zones and society headquarters stations |
| RSGB IOTA Contest | Last full weekend of July | Report, serial and island reference | IOTA island groups |
Around these sit dozens of smaller events: the RSGB Contest Committee runs an 80 metre club championship series on weekday evenings that is ideal practice, and the state QSO parties, sprints and national contests fill nearly every weekend of the year. The calendar on this site merges the RSGB list with the WA7BNM contest calendar and removes the duplicates, so you see one entry per event rather than two.
Which bands, and which are off limits
Most major HF contests use 160, 80, 40, 20, 15 and 10 metres. The WARC bands at 30, 17 and 12 metres are kept free of contest activity by international agreement, and so is 60 metres, so those are where to go if you want a quiet weekend rather than a busy one.
Which of the six will actually pay you depends on the hour and on the state of the ionosphere, not on where the loudest signals are. Twenty metres carries the bulk of the daytime activity, 40 metres takes over in the late afternoon and stays useful all night, and 80 and 160 belong to the small hours. The propagation score gives you a band-by-band figure from your own locator, and during a contest it is worth checking before every band change: a band that sounds busy may simply be full of nearby stations you have already worked.
How to enter your first contest
You do not need a big station to take part. Pick a contest from the calendar, read the exchange in the official rules, and work in search and pounce mode: tune slowly across the band, answer stations that are calling CQ, log the contact with the exchange you received, and move on. A hundred contacts from a wire antenna in an evening is a perfectly respectable first outing.
Search and pounce, or running
Running means calling CQ on your own frequency and letting people come to you. It produces a far higher rate, but it needs a signal strong enough to hold a frequency against everybody else, which is where power and antennas earn their keep. Search and pounce means going to find the contacts yourself. It is slower, it is where the multipliers are, and it is the right way for a modest station to work a contest.
In practice most single operators do both: search and pounce until the band thins out, then find a clear frequency and call CQ for a while. Start with search and pounce for your first contest and worry about running later.
Choosing a category
Contests are scored within categories so that similar stations compete against each other. The ones that matter to a newcomer are power and assistance. Low power normally means 100 watts, QRP means 5 watts, and both have their own results tables. Assisted means you used the DX cluster or a skimmer network to find stations, which most contests now allow but score separately.
Declare the category honestly on the log and enter the one you actually operated in. Nobody is checking your first entry for glory, and the results table is more interesting when it compares like with like.
Logging and submitting
Use contest logging software rather than paper or a general logbook. It counts multipliers, warns you about duplicates, keeps the clock in UTC and exports the log in Cabrillo format at the end, which is what nearly every organiser requires. N1MM Logger is the usual choice on Windows and there are good alternatives on Linux and macOS.
Submit before the deadline stated in the rules, which is usually somewhere between five days and a month after the event. Submitting matters even when your score is small: your log is used to check everybody else’s, so a modest entry that confirms two hundred contacts is a genuine contribution to the results.
Using the calendar to plan a weekend
The tool groups every event by day and lets you filter by band, mode and series, which is the quickest way to answer the only question that matters on a Friday night: is there anything on this weekend that suits my station. Filter to the bands your antenna actually works on, and to the mode you are comfortable with, before you start reading rules.
Each row opens to show the start and end times, the bands and modes, and a link to the official rules. From there you can add a single event, or the whole filtered list, to your calendar as an .ics file, which is the practical way to stop discovering a contest on the Sunday evening when it is nearly over.
One thing the calendar cannot do is tell you the exchange for each event, because that is set in the rules and changes between contests and sometimes between years. The link is there for exactly that reason: open it, read the exchange, then operate.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need a special licence to enter a contest?
No. Any licensed amateur may enter, operating within the privileges of their own licence class and power limit. Most contests have low power and QRP categories so small stations compete against similar stations.
What is a contest exchange?
The exchange is the short piece of information every contact must include. It is usually a signal report followed by a zone, serial number, grid square or region, and the exact format is set by the contest rules.
What is Cabrillo format?
Cabrillo is the plain text log format that nearly all contest organisers require for entries. Contest logging software exports it automatically, so you rarely need to create it by hand.
Which bands are used in HF contests?
Most major HF contests use 160, 80, 40, 20, 15 and 10 metres. The WARC bands at 30, 17 and 12 metres are by agreement kept free of contest activity.
Why does everyone send 59 even when the signal is weak?
Because in a contest the report carries no information and everybody knows it. The part that matters is the zone, serial or region that follows, so the report has become a fixed piece of the format. Sending a genuine 44 to somebody who is struggling is not wrong, but it slows the contact down and the log checkers ignore it either way.
What is a duplicate, and does it cost me points?
A duplicate is a station you have already worked on that band and mode. It scores nothing. Most modern contests simply remove duplicates without penalty, so if you are unsure whether you worked somebody, work them again rather than arguing about it: the contact takes ten seconds and the risk of leaving a valid one out is worse.
Can I use the DX cluster during a contest?
In most contests yes, but it puts you in the assisted category, which is scored separately from unassisted entries. Read the rules of the event before deciding, and declare it correctly on the log. The live DX cluster on this site is a fast way to find the multipliers you are missing.
Do I have to operate for the whole 48 hours?
No. You can operate for an hour and still submit a valid log. Some contests have a single operator category with a mandatory rest period, and several offer a six or twelve hour class specifically for people who cannot give up a whole weekend. A check log, which is a log submitted purely to help the checkers and not for scoring, is also always welcome.
Where the data comes from
The calendar merges the RSGB Contest Committee schedule with the WA7BNM contest calendar, unifies events that appear in both, and links each one back to its official rules. Times are shown in UTC, which is what every set of contest rules uses, and the ARRL contest pages are worth a look for the North American events in the list.
If you want to chase rare entities one at a time rather than in bulk, the DXpedition guide covers the other half of the DX game, and the DX cluster guide explains how to read the spots that a contest weekend produces by the thousand.