[CQ-Contest] Does packet spotting really helps rate that much????

Fri Apr 16 10:58:15 EDT 2004

On Thu, Apr 15, 2004 at 11:23:25PM +0100, CT1BOH - José Carlos Cardoso Nunes wrote:
> With all the e-mails and the debate regarding Self-spotting, I was curious
> just what really is the impact of packet spots in a Contest DX Pedition
> rate.
> 
> Take a look at this small exercise...

I've seen several of these attempts to quantify how much packet spotting 
helps or does not help a contest station.  Using a single contest log,
these analyses will never be very satisfying.  

Pointing out that QSO rates increase or decrease after any given spot is 
meaningless.  Nobody's QSO rate is constant throughout the entire contest.
You would naturally expect highs and lows, local minima and local maxima.
Your QSO rate decreases following a spot - perhaps your rate was naturally 
decreasing anyway, but it decreased less than it would have otherwise?  
Your QSO rate increases following a spot - perhaps it was naturally 
increasing anyway, but it increased more than it would have otherwise?
You have absolutely no way of knowing, because there are so many other 
variables at work during the contest.  A station being spotted regularly 
during the contest (say, once an hour or more frequently) might not even 
notice any fundamental difference in the shape of the rate curve at all, 
(for every spot-enhanced rate peak, another spot might help mitigate the 
next rate dip,) it might just be a few QSOs/hour higher than it otherwise 
would be.  An average increase of only 4 or 5 QSOs/hour, over 48 hours, is a 
big difference at the end of the contest, but something that might be very 
hard to correlate with particular packet spots.

The only way one could draw really meaningful quantitative conclusions 
about the effect of packet spotting on rate would be to follow the scientific
method and compare a "control" contest operation with an "experimental" 
contest operation, where the only difference between the two operations 
was how frequently they were spotted.  If we could have two stations at the
same location, with the same antennas, the same radios, the same operators,
the same propagation, and operating the same contest, where one station was 
spotted heavily and the other was not, then we could make meaningful 
quantitative measurements concerning the effects of packet spotting.  This 
is, of course, impossible to do in practice.

Which leaves us with qualitative data - mainly anecdotal observations about
how non-rare stations that are spotted infrequently all notice obvious rate 
peaks when we are spotted, how everyone knows what a "packet pileup" sounds 
like when a new rare station is spotted, and how the packet pileups tend to 
dissipate as the most recent spot for the station gets more and more 
out-of-date, but regenerate themselves when the station is spotted again...  
The qualitative data suggests that being spotted _does_ make a difference 
to rate, which is why some are willing to cheat by self-spotting.

> I went to DX Summit Spot Database Search page and searched for P40E packets
> spots during the 2003 CQWW CW Contest
> http://oh2w.kolumbus.com/dxs/qin.html
> Then I went to my CQWW CW 2003 P40E log and looked how many minutes it took
> me to work 30 stations before being spotted and how many minutes it took me
> to work 30 stations after the packet spot. From that I take a QSO rate.
> 
> Here is the result during the first day of the contest
> 
> the fields below are:
> 
> Hour
> Minute
> Time to work 30 stations before packet spot
> Time to work 30 stations after packet spot
> QSO/Rate before packet spot
> QSO/Rate after packet spot
> 
> Of the 34 packet spots I analysed, only 21 times (62%) my rate went higher
> than before packet spot.
> Not really what I expected....
> It seems packet spots don't really have an effect on the overall rate, at
> least for P40E...
> 
> 
> 
> 0	23	0:08	0:10	225	180
> 0	49	0:09	0:08	200	225
> 1	2	0:10	0:06	180	300
> 1	25	0:07	0:10	257	180
> 2	51	0:10	0:09	180	200
> 3	9	0:09	0:11	200	164
> 3	51	0:09	0:09	200	200
> 4	24	0:11	0:08	164	225
> 5	11	0:13	0:10	138	180
> 5	59	0:11	0:12	164	150
> 6	21	0:13	0:07	138	257
> 6	38	0:12	0:12	150	150
> 6	52	0:11	0:10	164	180
> 7	2	0:11	0:09	164	200
> 7	21	0:11	0:13	164	138
> 8	12	0:19	0:10	95	180
> 9	10	0:10	0:11	180	164
> 9	35	0:16	0:12	113	150
> 10	0	0:15	0:19	120	95
> 10	26	0:16	0:09	113	200
> 11	19	0:09	0:08	200	225
> 11	48	0:08	0:09	225	200
> 12	14	0:10	0:09	180	200
> 13	15	0:07	0:07	257	257
> 14	15	0:09	0:06	200	300
> 15	34	0:12	0:06	150	300
> 16	30	0:08	0:06	225	300
> 17	8	0:10	0:08	180	225
> 18	26	0:08	0:05	225	360
> 19	27	0:09	0:06	200	300
> 20	25	0:11	0:14	164	129
> 21	9	0:09	0:11	200	164
> 22	36	0:15	0:14	120	129
> 23	28	0:11	0:10	164	180
> 
> 
> 73's
> José CT1BOH
> 
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