You do not have to be a club member in most contests to play on a team. The exchange is the information you must pass and receive in order for a contest QSO to be valid. It may be as simple as signal report and state or a more complicated series of items such as in the sweeps. Remember, the exchange must be successfully completed both ways for a valid contact. Even if you are sure you received the other station's exchange easily, you must be sure the other station received yours as well.
Points Always have a look at the point system for a contest.
You may get more points for contacts outside the USA or North America and some QSO's may be worth no points at all. The point system will always impact your operating strategy. Scoring If you are using computer logging, your score is always figured for you but there can be bugs in logging programs which create errors in scoring. It is best to always go through and manually double check your logs for proper scoring. Log Instructions Read the log instructions carefully.