[CQ-Contest] Comparison of S&P between CW and SSB Sweepstakes

[Barry Merrill]

Comparison of S&P rates in CW and SSB Sweepstakes:

  CW Summary:  143 QSO took 146 Minutes S&P Saturday Evening.
  SSB Summary: 146 QSO took 208 Minutes S&P Saturday Evening.

  Or: it took 3.5 hours on SSB to find as many CQ'ing stations
      as I found in 2.5 hours on CW on Saturday evening.

  And it takes about an hour to scan a band on Saturday evening,
  but a half hour or less for a full band scan later in the test.

The details:

Having recently had my run-fun at KL7RA in CQ WW, I operated part time
in both CW and SSB Sweepstakes as Search and Pounce only, in an orderly
fashion, and measured my results.  I never called CQ once, and for each
time period, I scanned from bottom to top of each band, working every
station that I had not worked.  In almost every case, I made only one
call per QSO.  While I sent PREC='U', and I did spot a few stations,
I did not use any spots for QSOs, nor radio memories nor a band map.

Here are the details of each of the passes I made across each band.
The number of QSOs is the number of (new) CQ-ing stations that I worked
during each scan, and the minutes are the duration of each band scan.

I only operated CW for three passes on Saturday evening; the rest
of the data is from the SSB test.

CW Test:
 GMT Start     BAND   QSOs    Minutes   Seconds-between-QSOs
  2149  CW      14     67       67        60
  2300  CW      21     45       51        68
  0145  CW       7     31       28        54
CW Saturday Evening:  143 QSOs 146 Minutes S&P. 2hr:26min

SSB Test:
 GMT Start     BAND   QSOs    Minutes   Seconds-between-QSOs
  2101  SSB     28     16       19        71
  2123  SSB     21     28       37        79
  2207  SSB     28     46       63        82
  2312  SSB     21     40       62        93
  0020  SSB     28     12       21       105
  0047  SSB     21      4        6        90

SSB Saturday Evening: 146 QSOs 208 Minutes S&P. 3hr:38min
  0056  SSB     14     15       25       100
  0302  SSB     14     32       61       114
  0407  SSB      7     16       43       161
  0453  SSB      3.5   23       38       100
  1322  SSB     14     24       32        80
  1400  SSB     21      5        7        84
  1409  SSB     14     10       18        90
  1519  SSB     21     17       20        70
  1541  SSB     14      3        5       100
  1557  SSB     28      9       24       160
  1635  SSB     14      7       13       114
  1727  SSB     14      5       29       348
  1950  SSB     28     18       39       130
  2024  SSB     21     22       31        85
  2056  SSB     14     18       31       103
  2129  SSB     28     13       20        92
  2334  SSB     28     12       15        75
  2350  SSB     21      9       12        80
  0005  SSB     14      4        6        90
  0026  SSB      7      3        5       100
  0033  SSB      3.5    3        5       100
  0231  SSB      7      5        7        84



With regard to the SSB contest:

 I never felt a band was packed; there always seemed to be several
 places where I could have established a run frequency had I been so
 inclined.

 I completed my SSB sweep on Sunday Morning. I found all but two mults
 running.  Two mults I found only after they worked a run station I was
 tuning across, so I jumped in to ask them to QSY up, and both found me.
 I worked PQ this way, and then my final section NNY !!!!

 I totaled 429 QSOs  80 Sections 68,480 points in about 15 hours of S&P.

 However, I now note that I worked a grand total of 4 "Q" stations - I
 guess most don't really call CQ that often!

 Frankly, I was surprised at how few run stations there were on SSB.
 Of 2,500+ stations, I found less than 500 of them calling CQ.

Barry Merrill, W5GN




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