30 Ham Radio Contest tips -- Contest on your terms

This month, I’m providing a ham radio contest tip-a-day (along with other posts) to help you trigger your own contesting activities.Today’s tip: Contest on your terms.Contesting is many things to many people. If you're anything like me, you read about the great contesters in the contest writeups and see what they did during the contest. I was very impressed, stunned at the competitiveness of the operators and the stations, and was amazed at the amount of work people would do to simply win a contest.And then I almost gave up contesting.You see, I'm not an iron man, butt in the chair for 48-hours. I treasure my sleep. I have a wimpy antenna and for a long time had less than a kilowatt for power. In the beginning, I didn't know much about how to contest, much less be at the top of the game.Then I finally figured out I needed to contest on my terms, not some expectation laid down by what I read in a magazine or online about a contest.You see, ham radio is MY hobby. I choose to do contesting as the major portion of my hobby. So I'll follow all the contesting rules, of course, but which contests, how much time I spend in the contest, and what my goals are for the contest is contesting on my terms.What are your terms for contesting?Scot, K9JY