Five Ways Contesting Helps You Work DX

When I first started out in ham radio, my passion was for DXing. I loved chasing countries and have worked 320 DX entities before stopping ten(?) years ago.One of the ways that I was able to work a lot of DX countries quickly was through contesting. In a good contest weekend, like CQWW, I was able to hear over one hundred countries on the air. When first starting out DXing, this was (and still is) a big deal.Here's five ways working contests can help you work more DX:

1. DXpeditions to Rare Countries. Groups of ham radio operators will often travel to other countries to activate them during a contest. Usually, the contest operation will try and pick countries that have few other hams operating, opening up a DX opportunity for you. I worked lots of stations in Africa on this principle alone.
2. Stations on all bands. A contest like CQWW or the ARRL DX contests generates stations on all bands open during the contest time frame. This means building out your 5-band DXCC becomes easier when the stations need to work all bands to generate points. My 80-meter totals really increased by working contests.
3. Better able to work a station one-on-one. Contesting means only working one station per band; duplicates don't count for points. Consequently, the pileup on the station at 0000Z at the start of the contest will often yield to your DX need calling CQ during the second day of the contest on the same band.
4. Better QSLing. Contest stations know they will get a ton of QSL cards and have already thought through how the QSLing will be done.
5. Instant QSLing through LoTW. In addition, because contesters know they will get lots of cards, they try and reduce the number of cards received by uploading their logs to Log of The World as soon as it makes sense after the contest to give the deserving the contact. It's faster service to the person looking for a confirmation of the contact -- and fewer cards for the contesting station to work through.

Working DX through contests won't get you to 300-countries. But you'd be surprised at how well your DX dance card fills up by working contests.Scot, K9JY