[CQ-Contest] QSO Penalties

[Michael Tope]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: <K3BU at aol.com>

>>>Also, obviously nobody on this list has anywhere near the antennas and
> receivers and neurological filters that Yuri does if he can't understand 
> the
> idea of guessing. I guess he's NEVER had to sit and listen while EVERY 
> time
> the call is sent some QSB or QRM obliterates part of the call.<<
>
> Thank you for compliment to my 160m Inv Vee and roof vertical....
> Looks like it has not hit me that I could do some guessing. Like I got 
> part
> of W7AB? call, now I will guess: was it A or which of the rest of 25
> characters? To be safe I will put all combinations in the log W7ABA 
> through W7ABZ and
> will hit the good one somewhere. Is that how it works? I must have 
> overlooked
> this "trick" when call gets obliterated. Gimme a break! If you guessed it 
> wrong,
> you will lose it, period.

How about a less extreme example, Yuri. You comeback to very weak
W4 who is calling you on CW. You ask for several repeats and you think
it is W4EU, but your are still not sure even after the repeats. His signal 
has
faded to nothing. This is taking time and your rate is dropping. Was it W4EU
or could it have been W4EF who was calling K3BU? With no penalty, there
is no downside to leaving the W4EU guess in the log and moving on to the
next QSO. If you leave a 50/50 guess in the log, you will on average earn a
0.5 QSOs/guess after logchecking. With a 3 QSO penalty the downside risk
of guessing wrong is much higher, so your are probably better off to wave 
the
QSO by sending  "SRI W4EU? NIL 73 CQ Test K3BU" and then move on.
In the 3 QSO penalty scenario with 50/50 guesses you will earn an average
of -1 QSOs/guess [+1 x 0.5 + (-3)*0.5 = -1.0].  With a 3 QSO penalty you
need to be > 75% sure that you have the call correct to come out ahead
(+1*0.75 + (-3)*0.25 = 0.0] (on average of course). Not that any of us
can exactly measure our numerical confidence level on marginal QSOs,
but I think everyone has some intuitive sense of uncertainty in these 
situations
(e.g. I am pretty darn sure that was W4EU versus it sounded like W4EU,
but he kept fading at the end so it could have just as easily been W4EF).

Of course, there are the downsides you mention. If somebody doesn't like
you and they are less than honorable, they can cause you a whole lot of
grief by purposefully dropping you from their log or working you with bogus
callsigns. I would hope that people are above that (even with their most
hated rivals), but stranger things have happened.

73 de Mike, W4EF...................................


> 73 and have a great Dayton!
>
> Yuri, K3BU.us
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