Joined a ham radio club? Sooner or later, we bet you will have somebody absolutely begging you to join in a competition. If they do, go for it! Win or lose, ham radio contests are incredibly exciting. You get to be surrounded by like-minded people, and you really get to put your ham radio skills to the test.
Of course, this is a competition. Even though you will still have fun if you lose, we bet you will have a ton more fun if you walk away with the prize! The following tips should help you to inch closer to walking away a winner, or at least in one of the top spots.
Know The Rules Of The Competition
Seriously. This is the first tip we can give. You would think that it is obvious, but we have seen a lot of otherwise fantastic ham radio operators struggle with this area. They make mistakes that can cost them a win.
Understand the rules. Know the frequencies you should be targeting, know if any techniques should be avoided, know whether you should take breaks and the exact method that you should be logging information or exchanging information.
We have seen many ham radio operators deducted points for poor logging, so don’t fall into that trap!
Every competition will publish the rules well in advance.
Check Past Competition Information
Look at any information related to previous competitions under the same ruleset. This will share a few pieces of information.
Firstly, you may get information about the techniques that a certain team used to win the competition. If the technique worked for them, then it may work for you (more on that in a short while).
Secondly, it will give you a rough idea of the points that you need to score to win the competition. It is a target. The closer you get to that target, the more chance you have of being a winner.
Watch YouTube Videos of Competitions
If you are brand-new to ham radio contesting, then check out a few videos on YouTube. Watch some proper ham radio contests take place. Look at the ‘pros’ and see how they exchange information, the methods they use for navigating through the stations, etc.
While you could just jump into a ham radio competition and hope for the best, we really feel there is no better teaching method than watching real people take part in a competition. We managed to get a lot from watching people back in the day. Luckily for you, you no longer have to sit in on a competition to watch people. You can just navigate the internet and see tons and tons of videos.
Practice Your Exchanges
This isn’t really something that we can help you with here, because the type of exchange will depend on the competition. However, you likely will have to follow a specific format, similar to this:
- The first station puts out a request, specifically stating they are in a contest.
- The calling station responds with their callsign
- Call sign is repeated back, the information given, and location given.
- Response with the location and signal report repeat.
As we said, you will get a lot of information from watching tutorial videos on this. The key to being successful in a ham radio contest is to give your speech to a minimum. The more you speak, the less chance you have of getting a high point haul. After all, points in ham radio are all about jumping to a new respondent as quickly as possible. You don’t get points for being friendly!
Know Your Equipment
It is your equipment that is going to help you to win your ham radio contest, so make sure that you are familiar with it. The day of a competition isn’t a day for you to be testing out new equipment!
Make sure you know how to scan channels effectively and make sure that your antenna is set up correctly. You don’t want to be doing any last-minute maintenance.
If the competition that you are in involves some sort of logging software, then make sure that it works. We have seen many people struggle for hours to get their logging system running, often costing dozens of points.
Check Propagation Forecasts
Knowing about propagation is the key to winning a competition. After all, propagation determines which frequencies will be strongest and when. You will want to plan your day around the propagation forecast.
There are plenty of apps and websites that allow you to check propagation forecasts, so this part should be too much of an issue!
Determining Your Techniques
If you are new to competition, or you have a station with a big reach, then we suggest that you use the ‘searching’ technique. With this technique, you stick to one station and just keep repeating that you are in a contest. You should get a good number of nibbles, which means a few names to add to your log. Honestly, it isn’t the most exciting method for winning a competition, but it gets the job done.
If you are more experienced, then you can use the searching and pouncing technique. You will be running through multiple stations, hoping to pick out a few respondents. Many of them will be your fellow competition entrants. This method works best when you have a weaker signal.
In the weeks leading up to a competition, we suggest that you get down with each technique and see which one benefits you the most.
Should You Stick On a Station With a Pileup?
This is something that will depend on you, as well as the extent of the pileup. If you hear a ton of voices, then it may be wise to give that station a skip. Some of the stations with a pileup probably won’t be worth that many points. With fellow competition entrants on that station, you can spend your time tracking down something that is a bit emptier.
Use Unique Words
We know that we spent a bit of time earlier talking about keeping your broadcasts as short as possible, which we are sticking by. However, you should still try and make your messages a bit more unique. Everybody is going to say the same thing. So, instead of saying (for instance) ‘Mike’ from the ICAO, you could say ‘Mother’. This is something we have had a lot of success with, particularly during pile-ups.
Final Thoughts
Of course, this is just a brief introduction to tips and tricks that you can use to win a ham radio contest. There is only so much we can share here since ham radio contests are won based on experience. So, bear these tips and tricks in mind, but it is no substitute for going out there and actually communicating. Once you have a few competitions under your belt, you really will feel confident that you can start to win.
References
http://www.arrl.org/contest-basics
