"It's the Olympics of ham radio," Samuel had declared, his eyes gleaming with an intensity that was a little scary. He was talking about the CQ World Wide DX Contest, a 48-hour, non-stop, adrenaline-fueled marathon of making as many contacts in as many countries as possible.
He had decided to operate from Gregory's "big gun" station and had recruited all of us to be on his multi-operator team. "We'll work in shifts," he'd explained, laying out a schedule like a military commander. "The station can never go silent."
I was nervous. The friendly chats of DXing were one thing; this sounded like high-pressure, high-speed chaos. But Doretha had called it a "weekend-long radio party," and she was right. Gregory stocked the shack with pizza and soda, Azhar set up a cot for naps between shifts, and the air buzzed with energy.
Watching Samuel operate was terrifying and inspiring. He was a machine, his hands a blur on the radio dial and the logging keyboard. His ears seemed to pick callsigns out of a wall of static. "CQ Contest, 9W8ABC." A reply would come. "You're 59 in Germany." "Roger, you're 59 in Zone 5." He'd log it and be calling CQ again before the other station had even signed off.
My first shift at the mic was a disaster. The band was a solid roar of noise. Calls came in so fast I couldn't keep up. I was fumbling, miscopying callsigns, my confidence evaporating. But then, slowly, I found the rhythm. The world outside my headphones disappeared. It was just me, the voices, and the steady, addictive beat: Call, response, log. Call, response, log.
We worked through the day and into the night. Sometime around 3 a.m., during my shift, the 40-meter band, normally a regional frequency, exploded with signals from Europe. The ionosphere had opened a magic door across the Atlantic. I was logging Germany, Italy, Sweden, one after another, the points piling up, each contact a shot of pure adrenaline.
When my shift ended, I collapsed onto the cot, my ears ringing with the phantom sound of Morse code, and fell instantly asleep. The whole weekend was a blur of caffeine, camaraderie, and radio waves. We were a team, cheering for rare catches, groaning at missed opportunities, strategizing during our off-hours. We had a shared goal, a shared enemy in fatigue, and a shared joy in every new country that appeared in our log.
By Sunday evening, we were utterly exhausted but victorious. We had over two thousand contacts from more than a hundred countries. We weren't going to win the world, but we had done our absolute best, together. As the final seconds of the contest ticked away, we all gathered around the radio, and Samuel logged one last station from Japan. He took off the headphones, a tired, triumphant smile on his face. "We did it."
Driving home in the quiet of my car, the world felt peaceful. The constant roar in my headphones was gone, but the silence wasn't lonely. It was filled with the memory of our shared effort, our team, our little station that had, for one crazy weekend, shouted its name to the entire planet.