Recently I was listening on the CW portion of 20 meters, and heard many stations call CQ SST. I assumed it was some kind of sprint, a short mini-contest of some sort. I have heard others on the air before, maybe by CWOPS or FISTS, often in the evening. But they were usually 25-35 wpm affairs, not so friendly to casual CW operators. I wasn’t sure what the SST was about. So I Googled it.
It is a twice weekly event sponsored by the K1USN Radio Club. SST is short for Slow Speed conTest. It is described as CW below 20WPM, (though 20 WPM is not slow to a lot of people) and the required exchange is short, just name and state (or DX country). The idea is to build cw skills with short, easy exchanges. All the info can be found here.
It is one hour on Friday afternoon, and another hour on Sunday evening. I have found the typical CW speeds are close to or at 20 wpm, though you can hear some slower. But as K2OID often says, speed doesn’t matter as much when you know what is coming. I have taken part in a few of these now, and usually answer CQs after already listening to a few contacts and already know their name and state. But most will QRS to your speed if you sent your call much slower.
A few weeks later, I came across CQ MST. Pretty sure I knew what this was, but looked it up for sure. This is put on by the International CW Council. Very similar, twice weekly, but now at 20-25 WPM. Info is here. The exchange is a little different Name and QSO number.
Both of these are mini-contests, though I haven’t investigated that aspect. So far I have just used these to make quick CW contacts for fun and practice. But all the information is on their website which I linked above.
But both are an opportunity to get a feel for CW contesting and practicing your CW skills a bit.
