The CQWW WPX Contests have grown in recent years to become some of the most popular worldwide contests. The 48 hour SSB version takes place this weekend and the bands will be full of domestic and international stations. Unlike ARRL DX and CQWW DX the WPX contests also provide points for domestic contacts so other U.S. stations can be worked for points (and their many prefixes counted) by us.
See the rules at the CQWW WPX website for the *many* operating categories (by power, assisted or unassisted, single band or all-band, single op or multi-op… and the ‘tribander/wires’ as well as ‘Rookie’ {licensed 3 yrs or less} overlay categories!) , scoring details (more points for low band contacts on 40, 80 and 160m) etc. Note: Off-times must be a full 60 mins, logs are due NLT 5 days after the contest, and LP output pwr is 100 watts amongst other contest-specific rules… go to: www.cqwpx.com
Callsign prefixes are the sole multiplier — so many rare and unusual calls will be heard, provide an abundance of contest multipliers throughout the weekend and help contribute to an exponentially growing final scoring total which makes for a lot of fun. The many available prefixes also count towards the various WPX awards available through CQ magazine and which are now tracked as part of ARRL’s Logbook of the World electronic QSL tracking system.
The solar flux is expected to slowly increase thru this weekend and lowband conditions should improve as the geomagnetic indices decrease each night.
A record 5300 + logs were submitted for the 2012 CQWW WPX event and well over 1700 unique prefixes were available so the HF bands WILL be busy this weekend. So check that microphone out, verify your logging software is up-to-date and then make some QSOs this Saturday and Sunday.
Good luck in the contest…73, Bill W1WBB
Thanks for the great write up Bill. This is indeed a fun contest where everyone works everyone. Hard as it is to believe, if one is active through to Sunday, you can actually find mults getting fairly rare Sunday afternoon. Too bad this is scheduled for Easter Weekend since some of us will have other priorities on Sunday. But I hope everyone enjoys this one.
Looking at the calendar the New England QSO Party is looming on the horizon!!
73
Jim KS1J