[CQ-Contest] Winners of 2001 Eu Sprint Plaques

[I2UIY]

The EU Sprint Gang is proud to announce the Winners of the
2001 Eu Sprint Plaques

This was a new award for the 2001 European Sprint contests issued
to the three operators with the highest combined scores, having 
entered at least three of the four European Sprint contests in 2001.

Winners are:
#1 - Tautvydas Misiunas, LY2OX - 652 Points
#2 - Dmitri Gorshkov, UA2FB - 636 Points
#3 - Sergei Litvinov, UV5U - 577 Points

There are also certificates for the winners of each Sprint and the leading 
score from each country. Some places such as EA, SP and S5 that have 
lots of entries in the big contests like CQWW have not made many 
entries in the Sprint. Give it a try and you might win a certificate as the
top in your country! The more activity we get in the Sprints, the more 
fun there is for everybody!

Rules, full results, past scores and all time records can be seen at:
<http://loja.kkn.net/~i2uiy/>. The FREE Eu Sprint software can be
downloaded at this same address.

Season Greetings from the Eu Sprint Gang!


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>From K0HB H. Brakob" <HHBrakob at msn.com  Sun Dec 23 05:31:40 2001
From: K0HB H. Brakob" <HHBrakob at msn.com (K0HB H. Brakob)
Date: Sun, 23 Dec 2001 05:31:40 -0000
Subject: [CQ-Contest] Grey zone absorption?
References: <VA.00000614.0011722d at gw3njw>
Message-ID: <008001c18b73$1b208320$0a0b6741 at bigguy>



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Clive Whelan" <clive at gw3njw.fsworld.co.uk>
To: <cq-contest at contesting.com>
Sent: Saturday, December 22, 2001 8:54 PM
Subject: [CQ-Contest] Grey zone absorption?


> 
> This post to uk-contest produced a very small response. Anyone 
> here have a slant?
> 
> <snip>
> 
> This is a tad off topic, but I know of no better source than 
> contesters to discuss.
> 
> Over many years, substantially in contests, it has been 
> noticeable on 21 and 28 ( particularly) that it is difficult to 
> raise even quite loud stations when firing out of the twilight 
> zone. This happens often, even when the other station doesn't 
> reply to anyone else.

I posted your query to the propagation reflector
(E-Layer at yahoogroups.com).  

K4AW made the following comments.

73, Hans, K0HB

--------------

I would assume that transmission reciprocity generally
holds for received signal strength if ERP at both ends
is factored into the equation. However, there are at
least two good reasons for the problem you describe: 1)
the ambient noise/QRN level at your target location is
unknown (it can be MUCH higher than at your own
location), and 2) your target may be getting blasted by
QRM that you can't hear well, if at all, because of MUF
differences on the disparate paths.

So your target might be receiving many strong signals
that you hear only poorly if you hear them at all. And
those interfering signals at his location can be much
stronger than your signal even when you have a
relatively good signal from him. That's because the
stations he is receiving might be only a few hundred
miles away from his location if the MUF is high. Also,
the QRM and QRN level at your own station might be lower
than at the station you are trying to work.

An example: from the Middle East, pointing NW to work
the States, the signals from EU stations (particularly
from Italy) are VERY loud, easily 40-60 dB or more above
the Middle East RSL of well-equipped US stations.

To make an estimate of the magnitude of this problem you
must try deduce the QRM and noise level at the target
location and compare it with the estimated level of your
own signal there. W6EL has a nice freeware propagation
calculation program for Windows that you can use if you
want to do some trial cases. It's at
http://www.qsl.net/w6elprop/

Hope this helps.

73
Joe Mitchell
K4AW


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