By Cameron Maynard, Coal Valley News
MADISON, W.Va. — Madison native John Holstein recently competed in the CQ World Wide SSB DX Contest, which is the largest amateur radio contest in the world. He placed first in West Virginia while placing third in the United States and 17th worldwide in his category.
“Different hams from year-to-year compete, and they have different contests,” Holstein said. “It was phone or voice, and there were 10,098 participants in this year’s contest. There are different categories that everyone can choose to enter. Basically, you use a radio, an antenna and you communicate through voice over the air to as many DX stations, and you can choose how much power you want to use.”
He said if you’re just going to be a single operator or if it’s going to be multiple operators at that one radio, they have big contest stations that are set up that are basically million-dollar facilities for ham radio that have multiple antennas, amplifiers and things like that.
Holstein said that’s the high end of it while mentioning that, on the low end of it, you can go all the way down to where you’re using very minimal wattage.
