What is a sprint?
A sprint is a contest where a station that initiates a QSO (for example, by calling “CQ”) must change frequency immediately after the QSO, without working any other station on the same frequency. The reason for this is that in normal contests, high powered and rare stations can get a significant advantage by “running” – calling “CQ” and then working stations one after another on the same frequency, which can result in a very high QSO rate. By forcing the station to change frequency, the “sprint” format prevents stations from “running” and evens the odds for the smaller station. Note that the change frequency rule only applies to the station that initiated the qso; the other station is allowed to initiate a second QSO on the same frequency before he or she must also change frequency. Sprints are harder for beginners than normal contests, because you can’t listen to several QSOs by the same station in order to get it’s callsign right – you pretty much have to get the callsign right first
