For this year’s CQ Worldwide CW contest I heard KH6J from Hawaii on 40M, but I couldn’t contact them. Locals weren’t worth anything except for unique CQ zones as multipliers. I kept it to 5W and made 20 contacts on CW. I turned up to send 25wpm, since everyone was going so fast.
I still rely on the excellent decoder in the R1CBU radio UI, but I’ve been practicing reading CW too.