The "EveryHam" Radio Contest

I've been a ham for about 8 years now, and while I enjoy the concept of contests, I've always felt that I never had the time and resources to be competitive. Long contests like field day involve dedicating an entire weekend (or even running teams of hams in shifts around the clock), but short sprints were easy to miss if you had a job or other commitment that overlapped. I also felt like many contests favor larger stations, since you could often get more points by spinning the dial and hitting several big stations than you could by taking the same time to try to work a single weaker station.

Initially, I planned to just complain about the situation on my blog and then point out how I could probably do it "better." I had some vague ideas on how a contest could be more accessible to the "everyham," like by limiting power to something even smaller rigs can output, letting folks work around their own schedules, and somehow providing more time for working weaker stations.

Then I thought to myself, "well, alright dingus. If your so damn smart, instead of just complaining about it, why don't you just make your own contest?"

...And so the EveryHam contest was born.

20 watts. 24 hours. Points for distance/band/mode. Only the top 5 QSOs count.

You could blast out 20w of RF for the entire 24 hours and collect hundreds of contacts, but you’re still only submitting five. Someone who carefully chooses their frequency and greyline timing could potentially work their radio for only 30 minutes and still win. Longer hours certainly increases the chances that you’ll get a high-scoring contact, but it doesn’t make you unbeatable. Same goes for team size: running several operators at a time gets you more contacts to choose from, but you’re still only submitting your best five. Without the usual contest rush, there's no penalty to taking time to work weaker stations, either.

I think this would help address a lot of the “issues” I have with most contests. Time and resources might help you score higher, but they don’t determine the winner. I also tried to make the website itself friendly to hams who are newer to contesting, by keeping the submission process simple and providing immediate feedback.

A small trial was run earlier this month to work out the bugs in the log parsing and scoring system, but the first "real" contest will be held on 09 MAY, 0000-2359 UTC, with following contests the second Saturday of each month after that.

If you're already a serious contester, EveryHam will be pretty underwhelming, but if you're new to radio contests or are just looking for something that feels more casual, maybe this is the contest for you!