[CQ-Contest] WPX Survey results #4 - Operating Time Limits

[Julius Fazekas]

Do you think operational time will increase as 10 and 15 start opening more reliably and often? This may be part of the drop off in hours, it's hard to stay awake at very low rates.

73,
Julius

Julius Fazekas
N2WN

Tennessee Contest Group
http://www.k4ro.net/tcg/index.html
http://groups.google.com/group/tcg1?hl=en

Tennessee QSO Party
http://www.tnqp.org/

Elecraft K2/100 #4455
Elecraft K3/100 #366
Elecraft K3/100 #1875


--- On Fri, 11/6/09, Chris DL8MBS <prickler.schneider at t-online.de> wrote:

> From: Chris DL8MBS <prickler.schneider at t-online.de>
> Subject: Re: [CQ-Contest] WPX Survey results #4 - Operating Time Limits
> To: "Randy Thompson K5ZD" <k5zd at charter.net>, cq-contest at contesting.com
> Date: Friday, November 6, 2009, 2:53 AM
> About the fear of possibly shrinking
> activity with shorter time-based
> categories: Already now without them the majority of
> log-submitting
> participants operate less than half-time (i.e. 90 rpt 90
> percent in a recent
> WWDX-SSB or two-thirds in the 24-hour RDXC). So the
> majority of this
> activity cannot be reduced by "halftime-categories". How
> about that: the
> majority has not the time-budget or ability to operate
> marathon-distance and
> the desire for marathon is more vocal than operational (in
> WWDX-SSB 2006
> there were 35 SOAB-operators worldwide going longer than 40
> hours...).
> 
> Shorter time-periods may bring shorter op-times only in the
> group operating
> a bit longer than the threshold. On the other hand there
> will be (a bigger
> number of) operators a few hours below the threshold then
> adding a few hours
> to complete the "full-distance" or even being competetive
> in this category
> (now it doesn´t make any measurable difference whether
> they help their club
> with 10 or 12 hours - the difference being less than that
> of 10 minutes more
> smoking-break or reconfiguration-time at one of the
> club´s
> Multi-op-Stations).
> 
> A clever set threshold may minimize the loss of operation
> hours on one end
> and maximize the gain on the other end. I suppose the
> compromise will be a
> bit more than halftime. But at best organizers analyze the
> real operation
> pattern over some years (i.e. the open logs of WWDX 2009
> may reveal or not
> differences to 2006 possibly due to better condx) to gain
> more insight. In
> the meantime it would help the discussion in the contesting
> community and
> every participant to add the individual operation times to
> the score lists -
> without additional categories or awards but simply as a
> tool for better
> comparison and insight.
> 
> Just the 2 eurocents of a usual suspect with this topic
> (see the operation
> time pattern of five contests at http://www.dl8mbs.de/40984/45289.html )
> 
> Best 73, Chris
> (www.dl8mbs.de)
> 
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