[CQ-Contest] Is there more to contesting ?

[David Robbins]

Pete Smith wrote:
> 
> At 08:12 AM 11/11/00 EST, K3BU at aol.com wrote:
> >The propagation factor in contesting and operating is the big magnet and
> >mystery to us. There is such a range of conditions and putting some computer
> >model and rules on it is still very fuzzy. Propagation prediction programs
> >are trying to make some sense of it but they are still far from being
> >reasonably accurate. You add to it some high performance antennas, and the
> >range extends by some hours beyond what computer says should be happening.
> 
> With respect, Yuri, the programs do a great job if the idea is to make
> design decisions for your station based on smoothed average conditions.
> Statisticians can tell us the extent to which the conditions on a given day
> will vary from what the program says they "should" be, but we all know the
> variations are often quite large.
> 
> Also, the new generation of propagation software make it not only possible
> but desirable to specify antenna characteristics at both ends of the
> circuit.  That was the thrust of my query about the "average" antenna and
> power of casual contest entrants from Europe, to validate a basic antenna
> type and power level for use in propagation prediction.
> 

i have taken a different track with my software.  i want to know when any given
band will be open to anywhere given the best possible antennas and max power. 
that way when i plan for m/m operations i know how many operators are needed at
any given time to cover all the open bands.  that is also why i call my
predictions 'mof' and 'lof' instead of trying to predict signal strengths or the
'muf'.  for the 'average' station it is probably over optimistic, but for what i
want it does the job.

-- 
David Robbins K1TTT
e-mail: mailto://k1ttt@berkshire.net
web: http://www.berkshire.net/~robbins/k1ttt.html or http://www.k1ttt.net
AR-Cluster node: 145.69MHz or telnet://k1ttt.net


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