On 7/27/02 1:19 PM, greg and leann richard at k4no@mchsi.com wrote:
>Bill brings up an interesting point. I'd be interested in finding out what
>other folks in the SECC look at in terms of contest results and what changes
>it causes you to make in your station, your antennas or operating technique?
OK, I'll give.
As a little gun, one thing I pay close attention to are the band
breakdowns. You have to be aware of where stations are, because the band
breakdown for SS in CA is going to be very different from GA or MA.
I'll give an example. I believe in the last CW SS, about half of
W4AN/K4AAA (I don't remember if Bill was operating or not) QSOs were made
on 40m. This tells me that from GA, 40m is the likely band for making CW
QSOs domestically. If I can't run stations on 40m at least part of the
time, then I need to do something to improve my 40m situation.
Indeed, with the 1/4 wave sloper I'm using now, running is difficult.
Compare this to Phone SS. Look at Ron Hooper's record-setting "A" power
effort. Are half of his QSOs on 40m? NO! SWBC QRM makes 40m phone much
less effective. Instead, the rest is split between 20m and 80m. And I
also remember a K4BAI Phone SS effort where half of his QSOs (almost)
were on 20m.
Years ago, when I was first getting into contesting, I figured to get all
sections, I need to be spread evenly across all the bands. Not so. SS is
more of a rate contest. The key thing is to keep the rate up. To do that,
you have to be where the other stations are going to be. Knowing what
band that generally will be is a big help.
In my last Phone SS effort, I believe I wasted some time early on 10/15m
when I could have focused more on 20m. Rates were very good on 20m, even
for this little gun.
--
For a comparison, a station in CA or AZ will show a very different
distribution. K6LL will make 85-90% of his QSOs on 10-20m. That doesn't
work here in GA.
--
When thing I like about the web results is that it is easy to compute
your position in a category, even if you aren't in the top ten.
Bill Coleman, AA4LR, PP-ASEL Mail: aa4lr@arrl.net
Quote: "Not within a thousand years will man ever fly!"
-- Wilbur Wright, 1901
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