This years PA-contest (PACC 2026) turns out to be a special one for me. The first semester of 2026 I am a CW Academy student in the Intermediate class. I challenged myself to participate in the PACC 2026 contest in the QRP-section (5 watt max) and copying CW with only my ears. So no decode-tools like FLdigi, CW Skimmer etc.
First CQ run
The contest got off to a heated start. My first CQ at 20 wpm was immediately answered by a station at 35 wpm. I couldn’t possibly take his call in one go, so I had to ask him to repeat it twice. He promptly sent his call 20 times in a row at high speed. Not very classy. Then I was spotted on the cluster and my first pileup occurred. That was a real sweat! When it got to be too much, I stopped for a while. After an hour or so, I cautiously started searching and pounce again.
PACC 2026 Contest progress
The following CQ runs were less dramatic. The number of stations was slightly smaller, which made decoding easier. I did, however, often use the recording feature of the ICOM IC-7610 to listen back to the serial number because that was too difficult and I didn’t want to ask the other station to repeat my number again.
Even though I didn’t participate in the entire contest, it was still very tiring. I’m noticing that my speed isn’t “contest-ready” yet. I’ll have to practice a lot more to get up to par.
Voice versus CW
The last few hours of the contest I noticed I had not gotten enough QSO’s in the log. I really wanted to get 100. I did not had the energy to run CQ again. Since I participated in QRP class it is allowed to de mixed voice and CW. So I gathered my last 32 QSO’s in voice. Not my favorite mode anymore but it will suffice.
The first contest participation in ‘pure’ CW-mode (without cheat programs) is a fact! Now a lot of practice will follow to get better in copying at high speed and hopefully the next contest will go better.