[CQ-Contest] Domestic Contest Spots/Cheating

[Bill Coleman]

On Oct 17, 2005, at 2:58 PM, Steve.Root at culligan.com wrote:

>  I would conclude that I must
> have been spotted to account for this and make note of the time.   
> After the
> contest it was easy enough to do a spot search on DX Summit to see  
> how many
> times K0SR had been spotted.  What I found was that I might get  
> spotted once
> or twice over a whole contest. (Minnesota isn't exactly a rare  
> multiplier
> and I'm not going to be loud from here).  I see almost no correlation
> between my rate and any "spots".  I've concluded that changes in  
> propagation
> could easily account for the changes in my rate especially on a  
> marginal
> band like 10 meters.

Actually, it's probably simple math.

It's been a long time since I dealt seriously with queuing theory,  
but its certainly true that most Markovian (and many non-Markovian)  
processes will tend to "clump" like this.

The best example is the simple Poisson process. The Poisson process  
has one parameter - that in a given time interval, the probability of  
an arrival is some constant. So, if your running stations at 60 q/hr,  
then the probability that any station would call in a particular 6  
second period is one in 10. So, you'd think that someone would call  
every 60 seconds.

But that isn't what happens. If you model this process, you'll find  
there are periods of several minutes where no one calls, and then a  
minute where three guys call at once.

The actual process by which callers call you is probably a lot more  
complex than the Poisson process, but it will show "clumping" much  
the same.



Bill Coleman, AA4LR, PP-ASEL        Mail: aa4lr at arrl.net
Quote: "Not within a thousand years will man ever fly!"
             -- Wilbur Wright, 1901