ARRL 160m Contest 2021

This annual 160m CW contest is arguably the regular event that is most similar to the original Transatlantic Tests of the early 1920s.

ARRL 160-meter – for amateurs worldwide to exchange information with W/VE amateurs on 160-meter CW.

Dates: First full weekend in December (December 3-5, 2021).

Contest Period: Begins 2200 UTC Friday, ends 1559 UTC Sunday. This is a forty-two hour period with no time limitation.

Rules: The full contest rules are published here.

As one on-air activity to celebrate the achievement of transatlantic communications by radio amateurs, one hundred years ago, the RSGB activated one of the original callsigns that was used in the Transatlantic Tests, with six different prefixes being used from the UK and Crown Dependencies:

G6XX England
GD6XX Isle of Man
GI6XX Northern Ireland
GM6XX Scotland
GU6XX Guernsey
GW6XX Wales

The RSGB stations made a total of 740 QSOs, most of which were with North American amateurs.

Of those we worked in the contest…

Jeff VY2ZM had 6 QSOs – a great signal with all our stations.

AA1K VA2WA W1UE W2GD – also all had 6 QSOs – Dennis W1UE is often involved in RSGB contests.

K1DG K1KI K1LZ K3ZM K9RS KR9U N0NI VE3EJ VE3YT VO1HP WX1S – all had 5 QSOs.

AB3CX K1AR K1LT K1RX K2ZW K3AJ K3JO K4XL K9NR KP2M N1LN N2GC N4HB N4XD N5DX N8OO NO3M NP2X VA3DF W1TC W8MJ WB9Z WF2W – all had 4 QSOs.

169 stations had a single QSO.

The best DX in NA from G6XX was N7DD in Arizona – conditions were poor to the West Coast.