On Thu, Apr 15, 2004 at 11:23:25PM +0100, CT1BOH - José Carlos Cardoso Nunes
wrote:
> With all the e-mails and the debate regarding Self-spotting, I was curious
> just what really is the impact of packet spots in a Contest DX Pedition
> rate.
>
> Take a look at this small exercise...
I've seen several of these attempts to quantify how much packet spotting
helps or does not help a contest station. Using a single contest log,
these analyses will never be very satisfying.
Pointing out that QSO rates increase or decrease after any given spot is
meaningless. Nobody's QSO rate is constant throughout the entire contest.
You would naturally expect highs and lows, local minima and local maxima.
Your QSO rate decreases following a spot - perhaps your rate was naturally
decreasing anyway, but it decreased less than it would have otherwise?
Your QSO rate increases following a spot - perhaps it was naturally
increasing anyway, but it increased more than it would have otherwise?
You have absolutely no way of knowing, because there are so many other
variables at work during the contest. A station being spotted regularly
during the contest (say, once an hour or more frequently) might not even
notice any fundamental difference in the shape of the rate curve at all,
(for every spot-enhanced rate peak, another spot might help mitigate the
next rate dip,) it might just be a few QSOs/hour higher than it otherwise
would be. An average increase of only 4 or 5 QSOs/hour, over 48 hours, is a
big difference at the end of the contest, but something that might be very
hard to correlate with particular packet spots.
The only way one could draw really meaningful quantitative conclusions
about the effect of packet spotting on rate would be to follow the scientific
method and compare a "control" contest operation with an "experimental"
contest operation, where the only difference between the two operations
was how frequently they were spotted. If we could have two stations at the
same location, with the same antennas, the same radios, the same operators,
the same propagation, and operating the same contest, where one station was
spotted heavily and the other was not, then we could make meaningful
quantitative measurements concerning the effects of packet spotting. This
is, of course, impossible to do in practice.
Which leaves us with qualitative data - mainly anecdotal observations about
how non-rare stations that are spotted infrequently all notice obvious rate
peaks when we are spotted, how everyone knows what a "packet pileup" sounds
like when a new rare station is spotted, and how the packet pileups tend to
dissipate as the most recent spot for the station gets more and more
out-of-date, but regenerate themselves when the station is spotted again...
The qualitative data suggests that being spotted _does_ make a difference
to rate, which is why some are willing to cheat by self-spotting.
> I went to DX Summit Spot Database Search page and searched for P40E packets
> spots during the 2003 CQWW CW Contest
> http://oh2w.kolumbus.com/dxs/qin.html
> Then I went to my CQWW CW 2003 P40E log and looked how many minutes it took
> me to work 30 stations before being spotted and how many minutes it took me
> to work 30 stations after the packet spot. From that I take a QSO rate.
>
> Here is the result during the first day of the contest
>
> the fields below are:
>
> Hour
> Minute
> Time to work 30 stations before packet spot
> Time to work 30 stations after packet spot
> QSO/Rate before packet spot
> QSO/Rate after packet spot
>
> Of the 34 packet spots I analysed, only 21 times (62%) my rate went higher
> than before packet spot.
> Not really what I expected....
> It seems packet spots don't really have an effect on the overall rate, at
> least for P40E...
>
>
>
> 0 23 0:08 0:10 225 180
> 0 49 0:09 0:08 200 225
> 1 2 0:10 0:06 180 300
> 1 25 0:07 0:10 257 180
> 2 51 0:10 0:09 180 200
> 3 9 0:09 0:11 200 164
> 3 51 0:09 0:09 200 200
> 4 24 0:11 0:08 164 225
> 5 11 0:13 0:10 138 180
> 5 59 0:11 0:12 164 150
> 6 21 0:13 0:07 138 257
> 6 38 0:12 0:12 150 150
> 6 52 0:11 0:10 164 180
> 7 2 0:11 0:09 164 200
> 7 21 0:11 0:13 164 138
> 8 12 0:19 0:10 95 180
> 9 10 0:10 0:11 180 164
> 9 35 0:16 0:12 113 150
> 10 0 0:15 0:19 120 95
> 10 26 0:16 0:09 113 200
> 11 19 0:09 0:08 200 225
> 11 48 0:08 0:09 225 200
> 12 14 0:10 0:09 180 200
> 13 15 0:07 0:07 257 257
> 14 15 0:09 0:06 200 300
> 15 34 0:12 0:06 150 300
> 16 30 0:08 0:06 225 300
> 17 8 0:10 0:08 180 225
> 18 26 0:08 0:05 225 360
> 19 27 0:09 0:06 200 300
> 20 25 0:11 0:14 164 129
> 21 9 0:09 0:11 200 164
> 22 36 0:15 0:14 120 129
> 23 28 0:11 0:10 164 180
>
>
> 73's
> José CT1BOH
>
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--
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--
Kenneth E. Harker WM5R
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http://www.kenharker.com/
---------------------------------------------------------------
The world's top contesters battle it out in Finland!
THE OFFICIAL FILM of WRTC 2002 now on professional DVD and VHS!
http://home1.pacific.net.sg/~jamesb/
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