Contesting
A Contest is a competition among radio amateurs.
An international amateur radio contest usually lasts 24 or 48 hours. Short contest at national level often have a shorter duration of only a few hours. The goal is to perform the highest possible number of connections with amateur stations in a given or as many fields as possible and in a certain or all licensed operating modes on as many bands.
Contest transport
During the contest you start either a CQ contest call or respond to the call of other contest stations. During the connection, the call sign and the contest relevant data to be exchanged. These consist of the signal rapport and usually consists of a sequential number starting with 001 and possibly a Abbreviation of a region, state (local ) Association or the CQ zone. Less frequently used data are the name or age of the operator or eg New Year's greeting in the local language. The record of successful connections, consisting of the received and transmitted information and the time in UTC are nowadays recognized predominately directly to a logging program on the computer. Less frequently handwritten logbooks, if still accepted submitted to the organizer.
Classes
Depending on the contest, there are different classes of participants with different score. Thus, in principle, in many contests between the used modes of operation unless more are allowed, distinguished. In addition, a subdivision in single and multi- station finds man ( radio stations with several operators ) instead. The single-operator stations are often subject to a limitation of maximum working hours. Thus, for example, in a 24 -hour contest the single-operator stations granted only a maximum operating time of 18 hours. The rest period must be documented in the logbook. Furthermore, there is often a separation between assisted and non- assisted operation, which refers to the use of a DX cluster. In addition, a subdivision in the transmission power used is made. This happens most in the classes Low Power ( < 100 watts PEP) and high power ( > 100 W PEP). In some contests yet in a QRP category is further divided (up to 5 watts PEP).