While polar path handicapping is interesting, it still fails to account for a
major East Coast advantage: the number of hours of mutual daylight and darkness
to Europe.
Even with low absorption, the extra 45 minutes the eastern W1's get vs. us in
Ohio is significant. Especially on SSB, where being able to get a good run
frequency matters big time. And of course that advantage is even bigger vs.
people further west.
I had a little taste of this last summer when I did the IARU while visiting on
Cape Cod, running 100 watts with a HamStick on the car (I was comfortably
inside the house running on AC power, just a coax out to the car). I had a
great half hour window on 40 as the sun was setting where just about every EU
station, including lots of HQ stations, came right back to me. After that, it
was about what one would expect on 40 with 100 watts and an 7 foot vertical.
73 - Jim K8MR
-----Original Message-----
From: Bill Mader <billamader@gmail.com>
To: cq-contest <cq-contest@contesting.com>
Sent: Sun, Mar 22, 2020 2:17 pm
Subject: Re: [CQ-Contest] Polar path handicapping
Using distance and propagation factors makes a lot of sense to me to help
level the contest playing ground. We do a lot of this in sports car
racing. We even insist upon technical inspections when cars that should
have nearly equivalent capabilities pull way ahead of similar cars. Yes,
the driver can make a big difference, but not when entering a straight away
at the same time and speed.
Distance is easily calculated. Accounting for it is "easily" done. Paths
are a different story as we all know and maybe not love. Bob, KQ2M, is
headed in the right direction when considering propagation that affects
different paths differently. However, that relies on predictions for
different paths which we know is often inaccurate and sometimes by large
amounts.
Consider actual propagation using WSPRLite. A 200 mW transmitter at each
participant's location would provide real time accurate data at many WSPR
receiving sites around the world. Not being a programmer, but familiar
with Excel, I think it would be "easy" for a programmer to include WSPR and
distance data in a scoring algorithm. It would take someone much smart
than I to figure out how to add these two factors in scoring a contest.
I've been a proponent for using WSPRLit to give real antenna performance
comparisons for a couple of years at presentations I've give on the
subject. Much to the surprise of many, radio is based on science. While
anecdotes are interesting, I prefer data that tell me I need to keep both
the new and the old antenna but to use the new one as the default. Why not
use data on which the majority can agree for scoring one or more contests?
Good luck in the contest and stay healthy!
73, Bill Mader, K8TE
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