[CQ-Contest] CQ-Contest] Impressive demonstration of one dB of signal strength improvement

[Edward Sawyer]

Since in SS, you can only work once in the contest and we all know how ridiculously slow Sunday afternoon gets for the top scorers, it would seem that the Low Power stations can catch up somewhat over time.  This is not the case in CQWW where the rates don't drop to 10 - 20 an hour for the top scoring stations.

It would be surprising and probably no more than coincidental if the score change per db happened to be the same.

Ed  N1UR

-----Original Message-----
From: CQ-Contest [mailto:cq-contest-bounces at contesting.com] On Behalf Of Jim Brown
Sent: Thursday, August 22, 2019 4:54 PM
To: cq-contest at contesting.com
Subject: Re: [CQ-Contest] CQ-Contest] Impressive demonstration of one dB of signal strength improvement

On 8/22/2019 11:55 AM, john at kk9a.com wrote:
> Many years ago, Clarke Greene, K1JX, casually mentioned that he had 
> determined adding 1dB to your signal strength would result in a 6% 
> increase in your contest score (mostly applied to DX contests). I 
> filed that away for future reference.

The origin of this may be N6ZFO, who published an equivalent number for the difference between LP and HP in SS. Bill worked as a statistician, and his number came from statistical analysis of SS scores. I don't know when he first published it, but I saw if for the first time after moving to CA and joining NCCC in 2006 -- it was part of our strategy piece for SS. Doing the math, I think I remember that Bill's number translated to 6% for one dB, and I published that in an applications note about antennas, probably about 8-10 years ago.

There are several antenna applications notes on my website that NCJ wanted to publish, but ARRL decided that there were too many graphics, and deleting them would have destroyed the paper. One answers the question, "If could put my HF vertical on my roof, should I" (the answer is yes). Another studies the effect of height on horizontally polarized antennas, and produces a graph of gain vs height for 40M and 80M. It also destroys the myth that antennas have to be low for NVIS. Rather, I prove that low antennas are WORSE for NVIS. And it shows that, in general, vertically polarized antennas are strongly affected by ground quality, while the only effect of ground quality on horizontally polarized antennas is to influence their feedpoint impedance.

The website is k9yc.com/publish.htm

73, Jim K9YC
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