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Editor’s Note: OnAllBands is pleased to post a series of articles written by accomplished amateur radio contester and DX Engineering customer/technical support specialist Kirk Pickering, K4RO. The articles, originally published in the National Contest Journal from 2008-2011 and updated with current information, offer valuable insights for both contesters new and old.

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I was chatting with fellow contester and WRTC competitor W4PA, and I asked him if he had any good ideas for the Contesting 101 column. Scott felt that developing a basic knowledge about antenna designs and beaming target areas was a major turning point in his contesting career. He recalled the time he set up phased verticals for 80 meters for Europe and realized just how important a role antennas can play in contesting success.

My own “aha moment” came after I installed my first Beverage receiving antenna. I simply could not believe that a whole new layer of stations to work was available, simply for the cost of a few hundred feet of wire and some grunt time in the woods with a compass.

There are hundreds of books and thousands of articles written about antenna design and construction, and I recommend that you try to learn as much as you can. What I will attempt to do in this article is explain some basic fundamentals about antenna selection and design specifically for contest operating.

Contests Are Different

The antenna needs of the contest operator are different than that of the casual rag-chewer or even the serious DX chaser. Because contesting is a race against the clock, we need to be able to adapt to varying conditions and situations very quickly. While the DXer is usually only working one specific station in one specific direction, the contest operator may have multiple simultaneous callers from many different directions. While the rag-chewer has plenty of time to crank the roller inductor on his tuner for maximum output on a single frequency, the contester is constantly changing frequencies–and even bands–and does not have the luxury of time to spend tuning anything.

Contesters need to have an above-average signal into the major population centers when bands are open yet still be flexible enough to be able to pick up the rare double multiplier on the difficult paths and bands. Some big contest stations may appear to have “too many antennas,” but chances are that there is a specific reason for each one. The old adage that “you can’t have too many antennas” is probably true, with two caveats:

1. Antennas can interact with each other and actually degrade performance if not carefully engineered and located.
2. One must be able to effectively use all of the available antennas.

An array of sixteen A/B switches might be pretty confusing to decipher on the second night of a DX contest, especially for guest operators.

Target Areas

A good place to begin is to understand the concept of target areas in contesting. While actual target area directions vary considerably depending on your geographic location, the concept is the same. The contester needs to focus first on the primary target areas for the contest in mind. For DX contests, this usually means EU (or NA if you are in EU). For North American contests, this usually means the U.S. east coast and California. In order to rack up a good QSO number, it is essential to understand where the target areas are located and to have a good signal into them.

From the east coast of North America, for example, DX contests rule, and Europe dominates the QSO count. That means that folks who want to do well in DX contests should start their efforts by getting a big signal into Europe on as many bands as possible. For folks on the west coast of North America, Japan provides the majority of QSOs in a DX contest (although this trend is downward). Therefore, DX contesters on the west coast would be wise to construct effective antennas for JA.

For folks in the middle of the country, both directions are equally important. Domestic contests tend to favor the west coast, especially when the high bands are open. Their primary target area is the east coast, so it makes sense to cover the east direction first. In southern North America, it is important to have effective antennas for both the east coast and west coast. The point is that you want antennas that are effective into the areas where the operators are. For example, if you live in Tennessee and the only antenna that you can install is a dipole for 40 meters, orient it NW/SE to maximize your signal into the NE quadrant. (Remember that a dipole radiates strongest perpendicular to the wire.) There are simply more stations to be worked toward the NE than the NW from TN, so it makes more sense to cover that area first. Since a dipole radiates in two directions in a figure-eight pattern, you will also have a good signal to the SW. No single antenna is going to work effectively in all directions, and often two or more directions are needed simultaneously.

For starters, a good approach is to choose your two most important directions and start by building antennas optimized for those directions. Even simple antennas have directions where they are strong (lobes) and directions where they are weak (nulls). When you know where the nulls and lobes are located, you can take advantage of this fact by using one antenna that is oriented specifically to place its lobes where the other antenna has nulls.

Some Examples

We mentioned the dipole above and how it radiates in two directions broadside to the wire. Keeping it simple, a great idea would be to add one more dipole and orient it perpendicular to the first one. That would give us the advantage of having two sets of directions to choose from. The null off of the end of a dipole can greatly attenuate signals, resulting in differences of 20-30 dB from another oriented perpendicular to it. That’s like having a very large amplifier turned on when switching directions. Even more importantly, it works on both transmit and receive. Add a vertical antenna for the lower angle signals, and you can enjoy considerable diversity in both azimuth and elevation from three simple antennas.

Be sure to include some kind of antenna switch so you can quickly select the best antenna for the current QSO.

Note that none of the antennas mentioned have any real gain over a theoretical reference antenna, but they have considerable gain over each other in different directions. Such a combination of simple antennas allows greater coverage in more directions than any single antenna possibly could.

Getting Some Gain

One amazing thing about antennas is that you can modify their performance by placing other antenna elements in close proximity. Using a vertical antenna as an example, the typical shape of the antenna’s response (looking down from the sky at the azimuth pattern) is a circle. By simply placing another vertical element a specific distance away, we can “squeeze” that circle into another shape, like a cardioid (heart-shaped) pattern. It’s like squeezing a balloon–we take energy away from one direction and squeeze the pattern into a new direction of our choosing. We can orient the antenna in such a way that most of our energy is being radiated in the desired direction (toward the population centers). Not only are we louder in the desired direction, but we can hear much better as well. Signals from all other directions are attenuated, while the desired direction has some gain.

Here is another example. After using nothing but wire dipoles and single vertical antennas for 40 meters, I wanted something better into Europe. I had loaded the boom of my tri-bander with an omega match. The rotatable boom dipole was great for a lot of multipliers, and it was my best 40 meter antenna to date. Unfortunately, I was still feeling weak into Europe. Most notably, anyone locally with a “shorty-forty” Yagi was cleaning my clock on 40M in DX contests. Plus, the QRM from everything west of me was deafening when trying to hear Europe. After a few different experiments with different designs, I put up a two-element wire beam fixed on Europe for 40 meters at about 70 feet. Once I got the ropes in the trees and the geometry correct, I had an antenna that really made a difference. For the first time, I could actually run European stations on 40 meters (even if somewhat high in the band). I was no longer always the last guy through in the pileups.

While I’d rather have a real rotatable 40M beam, the second wire element added to a simple dipole really made a believer out of me. A simple two-element wire beam is not that hard to construct, especially for the higher bands. You can find simple designs in publications such as the ARRL Antenna Book and ARRL Handbook.

The post Contesting 101: Basic Antennas for Contesting appeared first on OnAllBands.

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Nothing screams ham radio quite like NASCAR, right? Okay, maybe not. But that doesn’t mean the two can’t share the same road together (pun intended), and we can prove it to you.

W9IMS will be hosting a special operating event running July 20 through July 26, 2026 (0000Z-2359Z, 3.840, 7.245, 14.245, 18.140) to honor the Brickyard 400 race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Participation will get you a custom QSL card, something W9IMS does for every race held at the track. Make a QSO during each event and you’ll receive a certificate.

If this is your first time participating in W9IMS events, you sadly won’t be able to get the certificate this year since the IndyCar Grand Prix and Indianapolis 500 operating events took place in May 2026.

All the more reason to come back next year and get into the action, right?

About W9IMS

Formed by a group of hams who love the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, W9IMS became the track’s official amateur radio club in 2004. President and founder, David, K9RU, a former turn captain for the Associated Press on Turn 3, jumpstarted the group to merge his passion for motorsports and amateur radio.

Over the course of their more than 20-year existence, W9IMS has conducted special events for these races:

• Indianapolis 500
• Brickyard 400
• IndyCar Grand Prix
• United States Grand Prix (2000-2007)
• Indianapolis MotoGP (2008-2015)
• Indianapolis Balloon Race (2009-2010)

About the Brickyard 400

The Brickyard 400 initially waved the checkered flag on August 6, 1994, marking the first time the Indianapolis Motor Speedway let stock car racing onto its historic track.

Before that, the speedway almost exclusively hosted IndyCar racing. Its most prestigious race–the Indianapolis 500–has been held there every year since 1911. The track’s then-president, Tony George, was looking for a second premier race to host, and NASCAR wanted to capitalize on the popularity of the track to bring in new viewers.

The event got its name from the track’s nickname “The Brickyard.” This is in honor of its original racing surface, which was made of more than three million bricks. While it’s primarily asphalt now, the 2.5-mile track still features a small strip of bricks past the finish line. The first Brickyard 400 drew more than 300,000 fans, with 86 drivers trying to qualify for the 43-car field.

In almost no time, the race became one of NASCAR’s crown jewels, with one of the largest purses at just over $11 million. Even the qualifying races, which determined starting position in the actual race, drew large numbers of spectators.

Future NASCAR Hall-of Famer Jeff Gordon was the first driver to take home the gold at the Brickyard 400. What’s more interesting is that of the 32 runs, 30 of them have been won by NASCAR Hall of Fame team owners. The exceptions were Ricky Rudd, who drove for his own independent team in 1997, and Jamie McMurray, who won for Earnhardt Ganassi Racing in 2010.

The Brickyard 400 consistently drew hundreds of thousands of spectators until 2008, when controversy struck the track, marking what would become a slow decline in popularity for the event and stock car racing as a whole. This is when NASCAR introduced the “Car of Tomorrow,” which drastically changed car dynamics, shifting weight distribution and putting heavier loads on the right-side tires. Goodyear also developed a tire with compounds that, many racers felt, wore too easily and would break down much faster with the heavier stress put on them. The result was a longer race, as no driver wanted to push themselves and risk losing.

Attendance began to decline, hitting its lowest point in 2017, when only 35,000 people showed up to watch the race. Fortunately, though, the event has started to rebound. Last year, 70,000 peopled watched from the grandstands. While that’s a far cry from its glory days, it’s a start in the right direction.

The post Get High-Octane On-Air Thrills During the Brickyard 400 Special Operating Event appeared first on OnAllBands.

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