Mapped contacts PE4KH in the CQ WPX CW Contest 2023
Last weekend was the CQ World Wide WPX Contest CW
organized by CQ Amateur Radio magazine.
The term 'WPX' stands for 'Worked All Prefixes'. The objective of this contest
is to get contacts and exchange information with as many different other radio
amateurs using morse code. Points are awarded for each contact, based on which
amateur band and whether they are in the same or different continents.
Multipliers are calculated from the number of different prefixes contacted. The
prefix of my callsign PE4KH is PE4.
The score in this contest is calculated from the points per contact multiplied
by the number of unique prefixes. This makes a station with a rare prefix
popular so radio amateurs get special calls or go to special places to be
that rare prefix.
This is also one of the big contests with a lot of participation from all
around the world. In the days before the contest there were already a number of
stations set up in special places busy on the air making contacts, testing
their equipment and their setup to get the maximum score in the contest.
This testing in the days before the contest already allowed me to get a number
of new countries in morse in my log: Azerbaijan, Antigua, Argentina, Madagascar
and Hong Kong.
In the contest I made 171 contacts: 33 on the 10 meter band and 138 on the
20 meter band. With 215 qso points, 138 multiplier my claimed score is
29670 points at the moment. I had fun in the contest and all the practice
with callsigns and serial numbers in morse has helped!
During the contest I added Australia, Qatar and Kaliningrad as new countries
in morse in the log. I have now had morse contacts with 101 countries in the
world, and now I'm waiting for confirmations via Logbook Of the World.
Update
I received a very fast confirmation for Australia already from VJ3A Steve. That was a 16490
kilometer contact with morse!
Thoughts
In preparing for this contest I considered adding an antenna to get access to
the 15 meter band. Now looking back I think I might get different contacts
(more countries maybe) on 15 meters, but it would not have added a lot of
contacts.
