2025 Sweepstakes

By Bob Hess, W1RH

Well, we completed our 10th ARRL Sweepstakes club competition in November.  How do you think we did?  Let’s take a look at the battle for our 10^th Medium Club win in Sweepstakes.

I’ve taken a look at the clubs who have scored well in past years as well as those who usually submit around 50 logs and sometimes fall into the Medium Club category rather than the Unlimited category.  This includes the Florida Contest Group and Contest Club Ontario.

With 53 logs submitted, it looks like FCG will be in the Unlimited category, assuming several logs have not been thrown out due to being outside of the circle, submitted late, etc., so we’re not going to worry about them.  I did, however, include their score in my tally, below.

That leaves the Tennessee Contest Group, the Arizona Outlaws Contest Club, the Southern California Contest Club, Contest Club Ontario, and the Southeast Contest Club.  There are many other clubs out there and it is certainly possible that a smaller club, composed of mostly all big-gun contesters, could come from out of nowhere but, based on previous years, these are the clubs to watch.

On the list of the club scores I checked, the top five clubs, with the exception of MLDXCC, had huge CW scores relative to their Phone scores.  This year will be the first year in the 10 years that we have been competing in Sweepstakes that our Phone score was lower than our CW score.  Not by much, however.   Only two clubs on my list had higher Phone than CW scores and they were Grand Mesa Contesters of Colorado and the Western Washington DX Club.

We had 22 logs submitted in SS CW, one of which was Alan, KH6TU, who’s great score of 124,320 can’t be counted because he’s outside the circle.  In SS Phone, MLDXCC had 25 logs submitted and, again, unfortunately we can’t count Alan’s score of 92,988.  Great job by Alan and, of course, he did work most of us.

I want to note the significance of bringing K9YC, W6SX, K6RIM, K6JS, and K6GHA into our club this year.  Our total raw score this year was 3,508,528.  Deleting the scores of our five new members brings us down to 2,866,496; a huge drop.  This is only 10,000 points above the Arizona Outlaws.  Remember, these are raw scores, prior to log checking, and a 10,000 point difference is close enough that log checking could make the difference.  If you happen to talk to Jim, Hank, Al, Jim and Don, let them know they absolutely KB’d for MLDXCC this year.

A note about log checking.  Our claimed score in 2024 was 3,413,016.  After log checking, our final score was 3,043,160.  That’s a loss of 368,656 points, which just reinforces what wrote, above.  

Bottom Line: It is looking pretty good for the little club that could!

Here’s my score count:

2025 Sweepstakes Medium Club Competition Ranking Based on Raw Scores

CCO = CONTEST CLUB ONTARIO

AOCC = ARIZONA OUTLAWS CONTEST CLUB

SCCC = SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA CONTEST CLUB

SECC = SOUTHEAST CONTEST CLUB

GMCC = GRAND MESA CONTEST CLUB OF COLORADO

TCG = TENNESSEE CONTEST GROUP

WWDXA = WESTERN WASHINGTON DX ASSOCIATION

FCG = FLORIDA CONTEST GROUP (Probably in the Unlimited Category)

	CW	CW	PHONE	SSB	TOTAL	TOTAL
CLUB	SCORE	LOGS	SCORE	LOGS	SCORE	LOGS
MLDXCC	1,902,660	22	1,605,868	25	3,508,528	47
FCG	1,657,126	27	125,954	26	2,914,080	53
AOCC	1,900,562	20	955,618	13	2,856,180	33
CCO	1,514,996	26	891,756	21	2,406,752	47
SCCC	1,425,364	20	912,808	18	2,338,172	38
SECC	1,471,470	18	777,202	13	2,248,672	31
GMCC	921,826	14	986,024	11	1,907,850	25
TCG	994,940	19	693,232	14	1,688,172	33

	2024	2024	2023	2023
CLUB	SCORE	LOGS/ RANK	SCORE	LOGS/ RANK
MLDXCC	3,043,160	36 / 1	3,157,382	39 / 1
FCG	3,027,430	51	3,261,300	53
AOCC	2,493,398	28 / 3	2,665,842	36 / 2
CCO	2,806,944	46 / 2	2,620,738	48 / 3
SCCC	1,555,224	26 / 8	2,268,250	38 / 5
SECC	2,083,744	29 / 4	2,209,318	26 / 6
GMCC	1,776,748	24 / 6	1,340,474	23 / 11
TCG	1,153,284	33 / 15	2,389,856	38 / 4

I want to mention our members who entered as two multi-ops.  John, NZ6Q, and Ann, N6ACL, used Ann’s call for the contest.  John is our Pacific Division Director.  Steve, NC6R, and Sue, K6SZQ, who used the call, W6LP.  Participating in a multi-op always helps to keep our log count under 50.  In a multi-op, no mater how many operators are involved, it still counts as just one log.

Finally, I want to acknowledge everyone who helped us get to what I hope is our 10^th win.  This time, I want to start with the lowest scores, because every score is important.  Our lower scores may come from experienced contesters who just didn’t have the time, members with limited antennas or from new contesters in our club.  Regarding our new contesters, remember your score in 2025 and try to beat it in 2026.  That’s the way I started out in contesting, with a new goal every year.