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ARRL CW Sweepstakes contest
31 October 2025 | by  |
| Normal contesting CW keyboard layout. |
This weekend is the running of the ARRL Sweepstakes CW contest. Last year was my first year participating in this contest. I have avoided this contest as I felt the exchange was a bit complicated. Once I dipped my toes into this contest last year, I realized it wasn't all that bad and was actually very challenging for me as a CW op. Before we go over what is sent in the exchange, let's go over the finer details of the exchange.
The exchange consists of:
Serial number starting at 1
Precedence (A for single of low power, B for single op high power and so on)
Your call sign is now sent
Check (The last 2 digits of the year you were licensed)
Section (For me it's NB for New Brunswick)
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| ARRL Sweepstakes layout |
Therefore my exchange for example would be as follows....
1 A VE9KK 89 NB
My next contact would be
2 A VE9KK 89 NB
It's not your same old some old exchange and it really keeps you on your toes as the exchanges are being sent to you. During the contest, you may be asked to send only a certain part of the exchange back to the other station, such as NR, CHECK, or PREC, and so on. For this contest, I find remapping my keyboard the easiest way to operate in this contest. I have included a picture of my "normal" looking contest keyboard and then the revised ARRL Sweepstakes keyboard. In this contest, until I get the flow of things, I will be search and pounce and thus the green keys are the ones I will use most, if not all, the time. It seems funny to some to add the green key shading, but for me in the heat of battle, seeing "CHK" or CH? can get confusing. Running search and pounce, I only pay attention to the green keys. Over top of my "normal" contesting keys, I placed the sticky part of the Post-it notes to cover what is usually there. Again, to leave it would only serve to confuse and frustrate me. When the contest is done, the post it note is peeled off.
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