All Asian DX Contest SSB 2026: what to send, and how to log it

The phone leg of the All Asian DX Contest runs from 00:00 UTC on Saturday 5 September 2026 to 24:00 UTC on Sunday 6 September — the first Saturday in September, then the following day, which is JARL's standing rule for it.

It is the contest where you send your age.

Bands, and who works whom

160, 80, 40, 20, 15 and 10 metres. No WARC bands. No cross-band contacts and no cross-mode contacts between CW and phone. Stations in the same DXCC entity get no points and no multiplier credit for working each other — for the rest of us, that means Asia is the contest.

The exchange: RS plus your age

You send a signal report and your age as two digits: 59 42. If you would rather not give your age, the rules let you send 01 instead — 59 01. That is the whole exchange, and it is the part that catches people out, because most contest software assumes a zone or a serial number and gives you nowhere to put a number that never increments.

Scoring, in one paragraph

QSO points depend on the band — 160 m and 80 m are worth more than the rest — and multipliers are counted per band: different DXCC entities for Asian stations, different Asian prefixes for everyone else. The point table is short and it is on the rules page; read it there rather than trusting a summary, including this one: JARL's All Asian DX Contest rules.

Logging it in QSL Buddy

The contest calendar already lists All Asian DX Contest - SSB with its dates, its bands, Exch: RS + Age, "Asia vs World" and a link to the rules, so it will be sitting there on the week.

What it does not have yet is a built-in All Asian definition. That row is informational: there is no one-click Start Session button on it, and no automatic All Asian scoring anywhere in the app. Here is the path that does work today, end to end.

1. Go to Contests → new session and choose the contest type Generic Contest.
2. Name the session something you will recognise later — "All Asian DX SSB 2026". Fill in your callsign, grid and the Cabrillo categories (operator, power, band, mode, station) while you are there; they go straight into the log header.
3. Set your sent exchange to your age as two digits — 42, or 01 if you are keeping it to yourself.
4. Log. Type the callsign: the field turns green for a new station and red for a dupe on that band, instantly, as you type. Space jumps you to the exchange field, you type the age you received, Enter logs the QSO and puts you back on the callsign. Escape wipes a botched entry. Dupes are counted per callsign per band, which is the All Asian rule.
5. If your radio is on CAT over Web Serial, frequency, band and mode are read from the rig and land on each QSO — one less thing to keep in your head at 3 a.m. on 40 m.

Be clear about what Generic will not do. It scores one point per QSO and counts no multipliers at all, so the score on screen is a QSO counter, not your All Asian score. Work the real score out from the rules yourself.

Sending the log to JARL

Open Export → Cabrillo and download the file. Two lines need fixing by hand in a text editor before you send it, both because you logged under the Generic definition:

• CONTEST: GENERIC — change it to the contest identifier JARL ask for on the rules page.
• CLAIMED-SCORE: — put your real score in.

Everything else in the file is already in Cabrillo v3 shape: the header from your session setup, one QSO: line per contact with date, UTC time, callsign, RS and exchange each way, and dupes excluded from the QSO lines. JARL accept Cabrillo or their own electronic log format, and logs are due within ten days of the end of the contest — 16 September 2026 by that rule, but confirm the date on the rules page, since JARL publish it with each year's edition.

Then use Merge to logbook to move the contest QSOs into your main log, where LoTW, QRZ.com and ClubLog can pick them up. Those integrations stay off until you enable each one yourself, so nothing goes anywhere you did not switch on.

If you are working it, say so

A proper built-in definition — per-band points, per-band multipliers, the right Cabrillo header, no hand-editing afterwards — is a contained piece of work, and All Asian is a good candidate for the next one. What decides the order is knowing somebody is actually going to sit down and work it. If that is you, tell me before September.

QSL Buddy is free: no paid tier, no subscription, no trial, nothing about contest logging behind a paywall. Good luck on the bands.