The contest calendar is packed year-round, and a lot of it is niche enough that it’s not worth planning your weekend around. A handful of contests, though, are worth knowing by name, both because they’re genuinely fun and because working them will teach you more about propagation and operating than months of casual contacts.
The big HF contests
- ARRL DX Contest (separate CW and phone weekends, typically February and March): U.S. and Canadian stations work the rest of the world. Great for chasing DX with a modest station
- CQ WW DX Contest (late October for phone, late November for CW): The biggest contest on the calendar by participation. Bands are packed, which makes even a small antenna surprisingly productive
- ARRL Field Day (last full weekend of June): Part contest, part public demonstration event, run mostly from portable and emergency power setups. I cover what it actually is in ARRL Field Day and Winter Field Day
- CQ WPX Contest (late March for phone, late May for CW): Scored by unique prefixes worked, which rewards working lots of different stations rather than just rare ones
Worth trying even with a modest station
You don’t need a tower and a beam to enjoy contesting. During a big contest weekend, bands that are usually quiet suddenly have wall-to-wall activity, which means even a wire antenna and 100 watts can rack up contacts fast. It’s one of the best ways to test your station’s real-world performance against a benchmark.
Where to find the full calendar
The WA7BNM Contest Calendar is the standard reference most contesters check weekly. It lists every sanctioned contest with dates, modes, and rules links, which is far more reliable than trying to remember dates from memory.
Getting set up to actually log it
Once you’ve picked a contest, you’ll want proper logging software rather than a paper pad, especially for anything with a decent pace of contacts. I walk through setting that up in Setting Up N1MM+ for Your First Contest.
For the fundamentals of getting on the air and making contacts in the first place, see my Getting On The Air: Modes, Operations, and Making Contacts pillar page.