Ham Radio – A contact sport

If you want some additional insight into your contesting efforts, I highly recommend SH5. Dmitriy, UA4WLI, hosts this program on his TR4W (TR for Windows) website. This little known, free, ham radio software utility will tell you things that your current contest logging software may not.

Where did I put my CQ WW CW 2008 efforts?

I wanted to document the results of this contest to help gain a better understanding of what worked and what didn’t. Of course, my last post discussed my score and initial thoughts on what worked and what didn’t in the CQWW-CW 2008 contest, but it was really just part of the picture… station improvements, CW practice, etc. 

Where did I place my efforts in the contest?

• On which bands did I devote my time?
• How much time did I really operate? How many breaks did I take?
• Which countries/continents did I find?
• What did my rates look like?

How much time on each band? QSOs on each band? Moves?

This chart shows the various bands and how much time I’d spent, the number of QSOs worked and number of moves made. What does that tell me? 

Looking at 160 meters, I see that I’d spent roughly 9% of my time on that band but only achieved 2% of my QSOs. Ouch. Perhaps some of that time would have been spent better on another band.

Likewise, I see that 46% of my QSOs were on 20 meters but I’d spent 31% of my time there. Perhaps more time could have been spent on that band.

Of course, there are more factors to consider… Propagation, time of day, S&P vs running, …  But this tells me part of the story.

How much time did I really operate? How many breaks did I take?

My contest logging software, N1MM, tells me that I was on roughly 25 hrs. Not all of that time was productive… in fact a lot of it was wasted with me experimenting with radio settings, PC issues, etc.

However, it’d be good to know how many breaks I’d had (large and small) in my operation.

Looking through this list of breaks, I see several cases where I was off the air for more than 10 minutes during some of the better propagation. Ouch. I need to make sure my breaks correspond to poor conditions.

Which countries/continents did I find?

In the CQ WW contests, you’ll work lots of different countries (DXCC entities). This will obviously impact your score (with multipliers). Just which countries did I work the most?

Here I see that Canada (VE) was almost 10% of my QSOs. That’s a lot of QSOs which do not also bring full point value nor multipliers. If (somehow), I could have changed some of those VE QSOs into QSOs with other countries, my score would have definitely increased.

Perhaps a focus on EU, Asia, or even Latin America over VEs would have helped.  Of course, in S&P mode, if I can’t find anything else, I’ll take VEs… 2 pts beats none.

What did my rates look like?

Contesters talk about rates a lot. It’s obvious by looking at my rates that I have room for improvement.

By not “running” and “searching and pouncing” instead – I did not sustain a decent rate during the contest.

60 times I managed 2 QSOs in a minute. 4 times I hit 3 per minute. I would hope that if I were to run, I would have managed to do much better than that.

 

What worked for those that beat me?

Now that some CQ WW CW scores have been posted to the 3830 reflector, I can take a look at how I stack up against the competition.  At the moment, I’m ranked 3rd in the USA in the (mythical) class of SOAB Assisted-Low Power.  CQ doesn’t really have a low power class for guys in the assisted category – but I don’t have an amp, so that’s the class I submitted.

In terms of the “real” class (all assisted SOAB entries), my score would currently rank about 50th of the ~150 submitted.

Naturally, living in the RF black hole of the upper Midwest means my score will be walloped by those on the coasts and in the south no matter what I do. Additionally, not having a second radio, an amp, etc. are more disadvantages.

However, I can compare my score to other SOAB-Assisted scores in zero-land. I see that I currently rank 3rd of the submitted scores in the 10th call district. Here are the entries so far for SOAB-Assisted in W0-land:

Call               QSOs Zones Cntry   hr      Score Club

K0KX              1368   140   421    31  2,144,703 MWA

WA0MHJ             829   105   300  25.5    918,135 MWA

N0HR               624    93   273    25    620,004 

K0RI               382   186    68  10.5    261,874 Grand Mesa

K0AD               348    69   169    11    219,198 MWA

N0HF               360   158    71    21    215,489 Grand Mesa
K0UK               336    75   161 9:47h    214,524 Grand Mesa

AD1C               344    57   142    24    176,115 Grand Mesa

K0EU               218    57   148    10    119,925 Grand Mesa

AC0DS              182    43    79    14     54,778 Grand Mesa

K0TG               126    41    82     7     41,820 MWA

What did K0KX and WA0MHJ do differently that I did?  They’re probably much better operators than I, were able to run, etc. 

Looking at the QRZ.com website for K0KX I see that he has a 4 square for 80 meters and huge monobanders. I certainly can’t compete with that. 

WA0MHJ has a nice website describing his station in Ham Lake, MN. Multiple antennas to choose from on 40/80, 2 rigs and amps give him an advantage. If I compare his posting on 3830 vs mine, again I get the idea that I didn’t spend enough time on 20 meters.  I also couldn’t compete well on 80 meters with WA0MHJ.  I’m sure that spending some time running with an amp on this band would have made a big difference.  Power and good rx antennas make a big difference on the low bands.

Call: WA0MHJ
Operator(s): WA0MHJ
Station: WA0MHJ

Class: SOAB(A) HP
QTH: MN
Operating Time (hrs): 25.5

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Zones  Countries
------------------------------
  160:    6     5        4
   80:  170    22       70
   40:  137    22       62
   20:  420    32      113
   15:   94    22       50
   10:    2     2        1
------------------------------
Total:  829   105      300  Total Score = 918,135

Club: Minnesota Wireless Association

 

Call: N0HR
Operator(s): N0HR
Station: N0HR

Class: SOAB(A) LP
QTH: IA
Operating Time (hrs): 25

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Zones  Countries
------------------------------
  160:   14     7        7
   80:   78    17       41
   40:  166    24       75
   20:  287    27      103
   15:   79    18       47
   10:
------------------------------
Total:  624    93      273  Total Score = 620,004

 

What’s missing?

There’s certainly a lot that we don’t know just by looking at this data. We don’t know if I went to the right band at the right time based on propagation, activity, etc. I don’t have a good way of knowing that.

Building a contest strategy for next time…

So, I’d already mentioned that running rather than S&P would have helped. No doubt about that. Better time management (fewer breaks taken at the right time) would have helped as well.

Sure the Canadian spots can look like easy ones… and I shouldn’t stop working them. However, searching for other countries (or better yet, running) should probably take priority at times.

Better band management should be considered. Be on the bands that are producing points – while they are producing.

Finally, as I had said before, I could have improved my score with SO2R, more antennas, an amp, a better radio, etc.  But that’s not the focus of this analysis.