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Contesting is one part
of amateur radio hobby. It is a lot of fun to run even some
200-350 radio contacts in an hour. I have always enjoyed running
so called pile ups during competition with another stations.Contesting is also a lot of other things than running contacts on the radio. Before the contest you have to make sure your radio station is capable to compete with others. It is like putting a rally car into its best shape to beat all the stations taking part.
Building big good antennas for the contest events is one of the most important parts of it. Your signal should be heard around the world when you call CQ in the contest. Today, most of the serious competitors are sharing the transmitting power to many different areas in the World with multiple antennas pointing to different directions during a contest. Many available relay and transformer systems make this easy.
Logging contacts is an essencial part of the competition. In the beginning I had a big advantage against others on telegraphy because I was writing with my left hand and making morse with the right hand. I was even able to make all this simultaneously. Since late 1980's stations have used computers with special software to log there contacts straight to a PC. All the time these special programs have got better anf better with more features. Nowadays, I am using Windows based software Writelog with many Pentium computers connected to each other with local area network.
Computers, packet radio and Internet technology has made a lot of new ways to help operators to get the maximum contest score. You can get DX spots about rare countries on the air via packet radio and internet clusters in real time. Also building a real IT environment to the station helps all the info to be seen by operators in there computers screen. The communication between the operators goes also via LAN connection in big multi operator stations.
After the contest the logs are sent to the organizer. The organizer checks your logs and contacts in the logs by putting them into a big database. By that way you know how well you really did in the contest and what is your final score without errors that you may have done. Nowadays logs are mainly sent by email but it is also possible to send paper logs by using normal mail.
Below you can find some of my contest achievements from last 20 years. In big international contests the prices are normally plaques, trophies and awards.
Here are some of my contest trophies that I have won during the years
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On 1990 we were number one Multi Operator Multi Transmitter station in the World in the CQ World Wide DX Contest which is the biggest amateur radio contest in the World. We participated the contest as PJ9W/PJ9A from Curacao Island in the Netherlands Antillies. |
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Here you can see CQ WPX contest plaques that I have on my wall. The left one is number one European combined CW/SSB plaque that I won as OG6YF on the year 1992. The right one is from the first club competition won by Contest Club Finland on the year 1997. |
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Here is the trophy I won from Finnish Independency Contest after winning that contest five times year after year. |
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On the year 1991 I was selected as a model young person of Teuva (my home town) because of my achievements in amateur radio. This is a trophy for that. |
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This is the biggest trophy I have in my shelf. It is number one trophy from Finnish domestic Christmas Contest on the year 2001. So, it is not so long ago I won it... |
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On the year 2001 OH6Y (Finnish Caligornia Contest Club) also won this club trophy which is given to the best club of the year during the year in Finnish domectic contests. |
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Contest Club Finland has been awarding the best station of Finland in the CQ WPX Contest during the last couple of years. This is the Finnish number one plaque of the CQ WPX Contest CW 2000 in Single Operator 7 MHz class. |
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Here you can see some of the CQ World Wide DX Contest awards that I have got during the years. |
Back to OH6YF home page.
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