I saw the RAEM contest being discussed here.
I'd like to thank the organizers and award sponsors for sending me not one but two plaques for the 2015 edition: BeNeLux winner and z14 winner. A bit overkill perhaps, but I'm not
complaining.
RAEM is one of only two contests that I know of where you actually have to copy something. The other is the QTC game (WAE CW) of course. That's why I like RAEM. CQ WW is big, but
what's to copy if you know many calls out of your head? Not the zone anyway. DX and rate, but no CW challenge. The RAEM exchange is spicy when sent fast enough. At least the first
time you work a station. I never use friend.ini or what's it called?
Second major asset is the distance based scoring. When I finally work that one ZL in the contest or a fluttery UA0 knee deep in the snow, the DX adrenalin flows and the score gets
a serious boost. So distance based score is fun and rewarding and quite fair. Yet this is NOT a plea to fiddle with contest formats. Let there be many flavors.
I admit that the start/end times are a bit odd for the US of A but still there are the usual suspects around handing out many points for each QSO. And that one sunrise QSO with
Texas on 80 or the PY calling on 40 is a big fish when it comes to points. Give it a try!
A few years ago I worked almost 180 (176? 178?) stations on 20m in one hour, being 'fresh meat' late in the contest. With the complex exchange and signing my call after every
contact. Mostly Russians yes, but at that time it was my fastest CW hour ever. Needless to say I have been doing this one almost every time since then.
BTW: LotW and eQSL can't handle the RAEM callsign. Maybe they should finally
address that? Yes RAEM is actually a bonus station in the contest.
Hope to be there this year too (Dec 25th?). RAEM contest is pure CW fun.
Franki ON5ZO
http://www.on5zo.be/
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