Time to pile up some of those left over Snickers bars and sit in the
chair for a few hours starting 2100Z.
Here, for those trying to figure out off times, are some comments and a
list of QSOS per hour put out by Tree in before the 2003 SS. NOTE: The
high bands, like 10 meters, played a much more important role than they
will this year. The list is still interesting if you are planning to go
to something like 24 hours, or even one hour.
Personally, I believe the 0900 hour is a sleep hour here on the East
Coast - the West Coast guys run decent totals among themselves on 3.5 at
0900 but you can work nearly all of them the next morning on 20.
Lets see if we can make two gavels in a row...
73
Hal
>From N6TR, 2003:
SS is really two different contests.
One is called Saturday and the other Sunday. You will find your average
rate on Saturday is about twice what it will be on Sunday, or even a bit
more. Therefore, it is important to maximize your operating time on
Saturday and save your off time for the slower periods of the contest.
As a general rule, I always try to operate the first 12 hours of the
contest without any breaks (or one at the most). After that 12th hour,
it seems that most of the stations who are active are sleeping.
Depending on my circumstances, I will get back on the air with 3 or 4
break times to use during Sunday.
There are other stations who will never stay off the air for longer than
30 minutes and they basically don't sleep. They will end up way ahead
of you on Sunday morning when you wake up, but it isn't clear that they
will be ahead of you at the end of the contest. Personally, I find I
function much better on Sunday if I have had some sleep.
If you find you need to take a break for some kind of equipment problem
early in the contest - try not to let it upset you too much. One year
at W5WMU, I had to take 30 minutes off in the first hour, but was still
able to win the contest.
I am not sure any break strategy that has you on the air for 11 1/2 of
the first 12 hours can be very broken.
So - what kind of rates should you expect? Depends on your power level
on the first day, but on Sunday, I think most everyone's rate is the
same. If you are QRP, you have more stations that you haven't worked,
and that helps your rate on Sunday.
For high power stations, your rate on Sunday will be about half of what
you had on Saturday. In some cases, they will be even less than that.
Here is some data I just pulled out of the 2002 SS CW logs. It shows
the distribution by hour and by band for all of the QSOs showing up in
the electronic logs that were received. Since I have logs from both
sides of many QSOs, these numbers are higher than the "actual" QSO
numbers, but you can use this as a relative indication of where the
activity is and when.
Total logs processed = 1158
HOUR 160 80 40 20 15 10 TOTAL
2100 0 66 2296 5240 7923 15367 30892
2200 0 1 2198 5333 11198 12770 31500
2300 0 2 2960 7748 13145 5727 29582
0000 0 79 5652 10082 10942 1765 28520
0100 0 863 8542 12488 5693 40 27626
0200 0 3244 11287 11552 772 11 26866
0300 0 5765 14532 5903 8 10 26218
0400 0 7101 15450 3414 0 0 25965
0500 0 7743 14495 1433 0 1 23672
0600 0 7369 11517 280 0 0 19166
0700 1 5747 7664 22 0 1 13435
0800 0 2618 3850 1 0 5 6474
0900 0 697 893 0 70 73 1733
1000 0 142 697 50 33 11 933
1100 0 916 1931 55 0 17 2919
1200 0 2640 6188 458 20 4 9310
1300 0 453 9461 4050 269 72 14305
1400 0 4 5277 8427 3276 70 17054
1500 0 1 3094 8886 7104 1334 20419
1600 0 0 965 7552 7602 5087 21206
1700 0 0 581 5294 6557 7255 19687
1800 0 0 170 4401 6403 7288 18262
1900 0 0 487 4672 6707 6832 18698
2000 0 26 746 5201 6339 6126 18438
2100 0 0 1834 5186 6404 5106 18530
2200 0 17 2796 5400 7760 2679 18652
2300 0 401 4163 6356 6367 443 17730
0000 0 1544 5310 6617 3120 31 16622
0100 0 2613 6952 6291 474 0 16330
0200 0 4164 6502 4115 0 0 14781
As you can see, the hours 0900, 1000 and 1100 are great ones to get
some shuteye.
(from N6TR on cq-contest)
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