30 Ham Radio Contesting Tips -- Leverage your strengths

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: Leverage your strengths.One of the truisms in corporate life is to "leverage your strengths" so as to better your performance.Yet, as contesters, we try and be all things to the contest world and stretch ourselves too thin. Sure, all of us will work a variety of contests and modes, but few of us will focus on those areas that are strengths in contesting.A classic example is one who is great at CW and not as good at SSB. Or a contester fabulous at RTTY trying to duplicate that effort on phone.Instead of operating skills, many of us ignore the reality of our equipment and geography. Instead of trying to be number one in the world in DX contests when we have a mere dipole and a hundred watts, we should focus our efforts on contests where a dipole and a hundred watts would give us the best advantage.Every station and contester has relative strengths to others. These should be identified and then maxed out to create the best contesting environment for you.Scot, K9JY