30 Ham Radio Contest Tips -- Have a Propagation Plan

This month, I’m providing a ham radio contest tip-a-day (along with other posts) to help you trigger your own contesting activities.Today’s tip: Have a Propagation Plan.It is one thing to have an overall plan for a contest -- what bands to operate, what QSO goals to have, and when to plan for off times. But a contest plan is not the whole story.A big part of the contest is propagation and propagation is a variable right up to the contest, if not during the contest as well.Knowing what bands are open to which locations is a critical skill to learn and this contesting skill can be significantly enhanced through the use of propagation programs.What these programs can do is take the solar flux, K-index and/or sunspot numbers and provide you a decent indication of what bands will be open to various locations around the planet. Printing these predictions out and having them beside you while you contest can be a great reference during the contest.I'm a great believer in not having the contester think much during the contest -- because the longer we contest without sleep, the less thinking is capable of being done. We are capable of only doing basic activities -- such as copying and sending code while working our logging program.Consequently, a contest plan, propagation prediction and other contesting tools being available to a contester is an invaluable asset to help keep the contester oriented on the right band at the right time with antennas pointed in the right directions.Scot, K9JY