Being an analytic type at heart I am always looking
into contest logs for any insights they might have --
or Fun Facts as others might say. Having gone back in
and looked at our NK7U log for the recent WPX SSB test,
here are some of my findings. I would be interested in
hearing anyone else's results in these areas.
QSO Point and Multiplier Breakdown
==================================
Points/QSO Total # of Mults % of QSO that are mults
0 693 256 37%
2 65 17 26%
3 509 227 45%
4 54 20 37%
6 288 67 23%
I am not sure what to make of this. It was interesting
that the % of QSOs that are mults for the 0 point QSO's
was as high as it was. Also, the percentages are
impacted by the order in which we worked the bands. For
example, by the time we got to 40M and ran JA 6
pointers we had worked through many of the mults on
20M. This is what tends to drive the percentage of
mults down on the 6 pointers.
More on Zero Point QSO's
========================
Though subject of much discussion, they are part of the
rules and thus strategies. At NK7U we had 693 0 point
Q's out of 1,609 total QSO's. This is a whopping 43% of
our QSO's. However, they did account for 256 of our 587
multipliers or 44% of our total multipliers.
Interesting. I wonder if having these percentages equal
indicates some sort of magic balance?
Another insight into the value of zero point Q's can be
gained by looking at our final score. With 3,599 QSO
points an incremental multiplier is worth 3,599 total
points. Having 587 multipliers means that an
incremental 3 point QSO is worth only 1,761 points.
This would suggest it is worth suffering through the
zero point QSO's in order to get more multipliers.
Of course the key is looking at the relative payback on
the time invested working zero point QSO's hoping for
mults, versus scrapping for positive point ones. This
is where the real strategy can come in and it up to
every operator to decide on. A calculated guess can be
made by looking at the multipliers gained as the 0
point QSO's progressed through the contest. At NK7U
here are the multipliers we gained in each progressive
100 QSO group of zero pointers:
QSO Group # of Multipliers
1-100 73
101-200 45
201-300 43
301-400 30
401-500 24
501-600 18
601-693 23
By the end of the contest we were still getting one new
multiplier for every 4 to 5 zero point QSO. Now if you
know the rates as which you run 0 point Q's versus dig
for positive point ones, you can start creating a real
strategy.
Relative Serial Numbers Sent and Received
=========================================
The fun of a serial number based contest is that you
can compare your relative performance with those of the
people you work. Here are some fun facts from our log:
* We received a total of 43 "59 01" reports and another
49 "59 02".
* In total we received 339 reports with a 10 or less
serial number. This is an amazing 21% of our total
QSO's. In some respect I guess this is because we
were loud, and we did represent a mult with the NK7
prefix. I think it also shows there are quite a few
casual contesters out there who are happy with making
just a few contacts. In aggregate they make up quite
a important part of our overall scores. We need to
keep them happy and involved through things like
QSL'ing promptly, being friendly, etc.
* In only 138 of our 1,609 QSO's did we receive a
larger number than we sent. This is only 9%.
* Half of the time the number we sent was more than
10 times greater than the number we received. In
12% of our QSO's the number we sent was more than
100 times greater than the number we received. On
average the number we sent was 54 times as big as
the number we received. Though this is somewhat
misleading as it is skewed by a small number of
"59 1XXX" sent "59 001" received QSO's.
That's it for now.
Scott Tuthill/K7ZO and one of the NK7U contesting gang.
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