Hello All!
Thought you might be intersted to see some trends on 160 activity
which I discovered while doing some research for K1ZM and the ARRL 160
Bandplan Committee. Many thanks to Ivo 5B4ADA who did an Excel Spreadsheet
and to Jim K4MA who loaned me his CQ WW Contest Results CD-ROM.
Below is the sum of 160 QSO's reported in CQ Magazine from 1975-1999
and the claimed scores for 2000 from the 3830 reflector. I simply added the
160 QSO's of the 5 top-scoring USA multi-multi's (...not necessarily the top
5 160 scores). You can see a definite trend of increasing QSO's as well as
variations caused by solar cycle maxima and minima. As we know, maxima are
bad and minima are good for 160 because of the strong influence absorption
has on 160 DX propagation.
Year QSO's (Sum of Top 5 USA Multi-multi QSO's on 160 in CQWW CW Contests)
1975 214
1976 300 Cycle minimum June 1976
1977 295
1978 229
1979 235 Cycle 21 maximum December 1979
1980 215
1981 298
1982 230
1983 407
1984 502
1985 647
1986 546 Cycle minimum September 1986
1987 495
1988 391
1989 392 Cycle 22 maximum June 1989
1990 523
1991 381
1992 433
1993 890
1994 781
1995 2080
1996 1474 Cycle minimum May 1996
1997 704
1998 898
1999 996
2000 1092 Cycle 23 maximum April 2000
Note the definite growth trends at both maxima and minima over the
past two solar cycles:
At cycle maxima, QSO sums...235-392-1092...compound growth +7.6 %/yr
At cycle minima, QSO sums...300-546-1474...compound growth +8.3 %/yr
Average growth over 25 years 1975-2000.....compound growth +7.0 %/yr
`The next solar minimum will likely occur sometime between late 2005
and late 2006 with cycle 24 peaking in 2009 or 2010. If Cycle 23 is similar
to Cycle 22, we may see peak 160 conditions just prior to the actual minimum
as was the case in November 1995.
73, Bill W4ZV
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