A cohort of international and local amateur radio, widely known as “ham radio,” enthusiasts descended on Antigua over the recent weekend to take part in the iconic annual CQ Worldwide Ham Radio Contest, one of the most prestigious long-running events in the global shortwave operating community. The annual competition draws tens of thousands of licensed ham operators across every inhabited continent, challenging participants to log as many verified two-way shortwave contacts as possible, with extra points awarded for connecting to operators in distinct, geographically dispersed nations. As the official and only registered team representing Antigua in this year’s contest, the group’s operating location on the Caribbean island made it an extremely high-priority target for competing operators worldwide, who often spend months planning their contest operations to secure contacts with rare or underrepresented geographic locations to boost their final scores. Dubbed Team Antigua, this dedicated collective has made the annual pilgrimage to the island for this exact competition for 33 consecutive years, launching their first local operating setup at Long Bay back in 1993, and now running their high-power shortwave transmission hub from a purpose-built station in the Gunthorpes district. The team’s membership is deliberately inclusive: while the core cohort is made up of seasoned ham operators traveling from the United States, the group actively recruits participants from a broad range of other nations, as well as local Antiguan amateur radio license holders to join their annual operating effort. This year, the team logged an extraordinary total of more than 12,500 verified two-way shortwave connections, successfully reaching operators in 154 separate countries spanning every major global region, including Japan, Australia, Russia, China, the contiguous United States, all of the European continent, the broader Caribbean, India, and every populated region in between. Based on their submitted real-time operation logs, the team projects they have secured first place in the North American division and an impressive second-place finish in the global overall rankings, though official final results will not be confirmed for several months as contest administrators conduct a full, line-by-line audit of all submitted contact logs to verify compliance with contest rules and eliminate invalid entries. Team leadership extended formal public gratitude to local partners that made their 2024 operation possible, specifically thanking Elite Island Resorts for providing discounted, convenient accommodation for the traveling international team members, and the Antiguan Ministry of Information Communication Technologies for streamlining the process to secure all required temporary telecommunications licenses to run their high-power contest transmissions legally on local soil.
Team Antigua Claims Top North American Spot and Second Worldwide in Ham Radio Competition
