DX & Contesting

What is DXing? Only one of the best facets of the hobby: sending a radio signal out and making contact with someone far away, be it a thousand, or even ten thousand miles distant from your station. It’s what truly makes amateur radio a global pursuit.

Contesting is a way to have even more fun. Contests are time-limited events where you try to contact as many other radio stations as you can. They can involve HF, VHF, UHF or even SHF frequencies and involve many different modes and groups. At the very least, its a great way to sharpen your radio operator skills and make contacts with stations that you normally would not hear.

Here you can find resources to help you do HF DX work, contesting, QSL information and HF conditions and propagation forecasting. Use them well and go and chase some DX stations!

(Note: for a quick “DX” fix- to work foreign stations- please consider using Echolink, or better yet, DMR to connect with a ham out of the country using nothing more than an HT (walkie-talkie)!)

Band Conditions and Propagation Forecasting:

Real-time band conditions: http://www.hamqsl.com/solar.html

by (N0NBH)

NOAA Space weather:

http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/

VOACAP Online propagation forecast:

http://www.voacap.com/p2p/index.htmll

Australian Government HF Propagation Website:

http://www.sws.bom.gov.au/HF_Systems

WSPR Net (Realtime propagation data)

http://dev.wsprnet.org/drupal/wsprnet/map

Contest Information: