>
>Bill, WB0O asks:
>
>> The question is: why does it take until June to get
>> the results? The entire contest season will be over,
>> and it may (or may not) be summer here, and my mind
>> will be a million miles from contests.
N6TR replied
>I think it is easy to understand why this takes as long as it does. First,
>it takes about 2 months to get all of the logs, and fix some of the problem
>logs up (those that are missing information or logged the contest in local
>time or sent in the previous year's log). Then, the log crunching has to
>occur, and in the past few years, there has been work put into improving
>the capabilities of that process at the same time. Once the numbers are
>generated, then the writeup needs to be written and folded into the schedule
>of the two people in the contest department at the ARRL. Then, finally, it
>goes off to the printers and gets mailed out using the slow mail.
>
>And that doens't mention the paper logs that have to be dealt with manually
>(still about 10 percent).
>
>Many things are changing that can reduce this time and already this has
>happened. The robots are helping clean up problem logs in real time.
>Publication of the results on the web eliminates the printing and
>mailing delay. The log checking process is near "perfection" and requires
>less development in parallel. It might be very possible to have "final"
>results for all stations within two months of the contest.
>
>The ARRL has come up with a new schedule for results, and things are moving
>up about 6 weeks for this year I understand.
November QST (p.104) says "We are still working on the schedule, but in
general, the results should be available to ARRL members 3 to 4 months after
the end of the event. This allows us time to process logs, handle problems,
add in paper logs and generate a nice write-up. This is 2 to 3 months sooner
than the current QST schedule." For non-members the results will be
available on the ARRL web site the month before the QST issue (i.e. early
October for results that will be in November QST) - or 5 to 7 months after the
contest. At least that is the stated plan!
-- Tom
=====
e-mail: frenaye@pcnet.com
Tom Frenaye, K1KI, P O Box J, West Suffield CT 06093 Phone: 860-668-5444
|