Are you seriously thinking the "extra" time it takes you to send your
check is significant compared with the many other variables involved in
the contest?
a. The dead time between CQs versus the incidence of potential callers
deciding to QSY (and never come back) because they got tired of waiting
for you to send your longer check.
b. Time lost or gained due to your choices during the contest when to
run and when to S&P
c. Time spent sending your call (versus someone else's longer one)
d. Less time you spent swinging the beam versus someone living in, say,
Nebraska
e. Time lost sending your entire exchange at 29 wpm later in the contest
versus 32 wpm earlier (10% impact)
f. etc, etc, etc
It seems to me that worrying about your check is a lot like calculating
the length of a 160m antenna to the nearest millimeter ... other more
significant variables rule the day.
Dave AB7E
D K7GK wrote:
> Since operating in Sweepstakes for the first time a few years ago and
> falling in love with this contest, I wondered - am I at a real disadvantage
> given that my check is 00 or ten dahs on CW? Finally I decided to do a
> simple estimate and it goes like this. Suppose my average sending speed is
> 32WPM (I typically start at 35 and end up at 29 by the end) and let's
> disregard the fills. Sending 00 takes 41 dots (from here on dot is the
> amount of time to send a dit, dah is 3 dots, space between letters is 3 dots
> and so on). Sending 78 (average length check) takes 31 dots and sending 55
> (shortest check) takes 21 dots. Using "PARIS" as a typical word for this
> estimate I get that there are 42 dots in a word and 3 extra dots for space,
> a total of 45 dots. Therefore in a minute there are 32 words or 32*45 = 1440
> dots, or one dot is 1/1440 minutes long. This means that in every exchange I
> lose (41-31)*(1/1440) = 1/144 minutes compared to a check 78 and twice that
> to check 55. Having made about 1200 contacts in the last two sweepstakes
> this means that I spent 1200/144=8.3 extra minutes on sending long check
> compared to an average operator and 16.6 extra minutes compared to a lucky
> one. This roughly translates to 7 or 14 QSOs less given the average rates. I
> am well aware that life is not fair (I do contest from the Pacific
> Northwest), but am I being robbed?
>
> 73, Denis - K7GK
>
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