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Contesting for Dx'ers
If you are just starting out in DX'ing and want to run up the first one hundred
to one hundred and fifty countries fast then you need to play in the DX contest.
You can work enough countries to qualify for DXCC in a weekend without a lot of
work, or neglecting the family too much. If you are lucky the family will
recognize this as a form of 48 hour flu that will suddenly end Sunday night at
2400 UTC.
During contest you will hear stations calling from countries that just don't
seem to be on any other time. Some hams make a vacation out of it and go to a
selected country because they know it will draw a crowd in the contest. The
local ham population, if there is one, may not be interested in working DX so
this may be your best shot. Some DX'peditions take place during contest and a
lot of the time they are active in the contest. For some reason it seems to me
that they are easier to work during a contest than outside it. With so many
people calling so many stations they just don't stand out like they do during
the normal calm of regular days.
Most times the vacationing hams will be on the air for a few days before the
contest trying out the station to make sure everything works. That is a good
time to be scanning the bands looking for new ones if you just aren't interested
in playing in the contest. There are several web sites that contain information
about who is going where for a contest, and I will add links to those pages as
time permits. Using those sites you can browse and see if anything you need is
going to be activated for a certain contest.
Just remember that more than one person or group may be going to the same place.
If you are tuning around the bands in the days before a contest and find a large
pileup for a country that you need, take the time to tune around a little bit
more. You may find another station from the same location with a smaller pileup.
A perfect example took place a while back with Jamaica. There was a large group
putting on a full blown contest station for one of the contest. A few days
before the contest I came across them working a rather large pileup. I made a
few calls, but didn't waste a lot of time. It was on 20 meters SSB, the pileup
was large, and I was low power. I figured if they were attracting all the
attention I may find something interesting on up the band. It wasn't far up the
band that another station was calling CQ from Jamaica. He was only running about
100 watts so his signal was less impressive. One call was all it took to put him
in the log and move on. During the contest I worked the big station a couple
times on different bands with no trouble, usually on the first call. Sometimes
you have to make the decision whether to stay and fight it out, or move on and
look for an easier target.