[Today’s run: Watson Road 3.5 miles]
One of my favorite ham radio contests is the ARRL Sweepstakes. They split it up into two parts, one for CW (morse code) and one for phone (voice), and it happens in November.
The goal is to talk to as many other hams in the US/Canada as possible. If you get at least one contact from each of 83 regions you have a “clean sweep”.
The contest period is something like 36 hours. I maybe operated for 5 hours and I had 100 contacts. (The big contest stations will have way over a thousand.) This year I tried a different strategy. Instead of tuning around and answering other people’s calls, I picked a good spot and called. The rhythm of operation is a bit different. That’s the first time I have done the bulk of a contest in such a manner. I enjoyed it.
The radio I am using these days is not a good contest radio. It is a Direct Conversion receiver, so you hear every station on both sides of the zero-beat. It makes for a very crowded band. I attempted to put myself on the high side of the contest activity. When things got rough I moved up. At one time I was operating between RTTY stations on 20 meters. I did get some replies. But somebody also sent, “ARE YOU LOST?” so maybe I’ll come up with a different strategy for next year.