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Welcome to the official web site of CQ WPX RTTY Contest.

Held each year on the second full weekend of February, the contest draws thousands of participants from around the world.

SWL Participation

While primarily an amateur radio contest, WPX RTTY is also popular with SWL enthusiasts. Thanks to Marek, SP7DQR, who has written SWL log check software and to Dan, I1-12387, who will lead the SWL log checking.

Entrants follow the regular rules for a single-op, except they are logging the received QSO and not transmitting.
Optionally, each side of a QSO may be logged as separate QSO lines, i.e., two lines.
Received call signs may not appear more than three times per band in the log. Any additional entries of the same call sign will not count.
Logs must be submitted in the standard Cabrillo format for CQ WPX RTTY. Make sure one of the following lines is in the header:
CATEGORY: SWL (Cabrillo 2.0)
CATEGORY-TRANSMITTER: SWL (Cabrillo 3.0)

MixW Cabrillo Logs

Many of the Cabrillo format problems in submitted logs are from MixW users. Thanks to Rich, VE3KI (ex-VE3IAY), for the MixW Notes section on the Logs web page which explains how to setup and use MixW so that the Cabrillo log created after the contest will be readily accepted by the log robot.

Certificate "Call Areas"

In the results, some call signs have a portable designator added when none was used in the contest. For example, KY0W sends that call sign when operating from California. However, in the results listing his entry is shown as 'KY0W/6' because he operated from the US 6th call area. This is done to clarify that KY0W's results are grouped with all others in his category from US call area 6 solely for the purpose of certificate awards.

See the Awards section of the Rules where it states that certificates are awarded on a country basis except for the US, Canada, Australia, European Russia, Asiatic Russia, Spain, and Japan. Certificates are awarded by call areas in these seven large countries. "Call areas" generally conform to the ten numerical call areas, 0-9, but in some cases there are groupings where there isn't an explicit numerical call area. Two examples of this are in Canada where, for CQ certificate purposes, Canadian call area 1 is defined as the prefixes (and, multipliers) east of VE2, i.e., VE1, VE9, VO1, VO2, and VY2. Canadian call area 8 is similarly defined as VE8, VY0 and VY1.

These assigned call areas are only for the purpose of certificate awards. Prefixes are independently defined in the Prefix Multipliers section of the rules. Logs are checked using the call signs actually sent during the contest.

2012 CQ WPX RTTY Contest

February 9-10, 2013

Starts: 0000 GMT Saturday
Ends: 2359 GMT Sunday

Contest begins in ...

Rule changes are minor for 2012, for example:

M2 band change limit moved from 10 to 8 band changes per clock hour

Identical wording is used for both the RTTY and CW/SSB rules where the intent is the same. However, there are some key differences for the RTTY mode:

No 1.8 MHz operation
No Single-Op Un-Assisted, i.e., assistance permitted in all Single-Op categories
Single-Op 30-hour limit (vs. 36)
Contact points:
- Different-country contacts within any continent (not just North America) get 2 or 4 points
- Same-country contacts get 2 points on the low bands

What are you looking for?

Rules

Log submittal

Received logs