For those of you just starting in the dx world, or if you are a casual DXer, you have an opportunity to bring up your totals with the annual DX contests in October and November during each year. I have over the last five and half decades worked these contests on a casual basis, and only once did I submit my score.. I am not out to be a contest king, however about twenty years ago when I had more stamina for continuous operating I did place 27th in the fourth district. Not bad for the large amounts of submissions and the population of hams in the fourth district.
A word about contests and the results you might have in the DX contests, Europe is always well represented and one can work most of the countries in Europe during one contest. However, the smaller countries in Europe, namely IA0 the SMOM, the Vatican, are not known to be active during contests.
There is a lot of activity from various Russian countries, but the more rarer ones like 4L or UJ or UN are rarely present in contests. The contest activity from Africa is very sparse, once in a while we have some meager activity from South Africa and Morocco little else ever surfaces.
In recent years the Caribbean is well represented, but South America as a whole has been sparse in the last few years.
Asia is well represented by Japan, but the other countries of Asia are not, odd the Chinese ops were not active in the contest, yet appeared after the event was over, several good signals appeared, but few callers.
There is a fair amount of activity from VK and ZL land during contests, but one has to listen for them. I found pretty good activity on 40 during the most recent event. Good signals early in the morning around 7.130. Also one station from Indonesia around the same frequency.
During DX contests you have endless CQs by many stateside stations, many attract nothing, I prefer the "hunt and pounce" method, searching over the band, working what I hear and this has become my method over the years. I work as many as I can in a specified period, maybe over the course of a few hours.
A note on qsl exchange, many of these DX stations are contest machines, qsling is not a top priority, you may, or more likely not receive a card even if you send direct. Seemingly, many of these stations do not assign any one to take care of the qsl chores. So, they are often ignored, there are some exceptions and you may take your chances.
Are contests worth the time and trouble, well in some ways yes, in other ways no.. If you are at the top of the Honor roll, contests for the most part will net very little for you. In my case, I need only one country in this world for all of them. P5 is not likely to appear in contests, or in normal operation any time soon.
I may build my Band Country total, that is if I can receive a qsl card. In past years during contests I stayed on 40 meters to build my band total, the qsl rate was about 50/50. Most of the major contest machines and that is stations you never hear on the air any other times were the poorest in qsl return.
If you are one only interested in a score, or trying to be the contest hot dog, you want to spend the entire weekend operating, but if you are not and just want to build your totals, take your chances of confirming some contacts, then go for it.
Have fun in any contests, that is the point of it all.
