[CQ-Contest] calculating CW duty cycle

[Paul O'Kane]

On 04/07/2022 05:24, AB2E Darrell wrote:
> Hello all,
> Can anyone tell me the approximate duty cycle for 30-35wpm CW in a contest?
>
The duty cycle for CW does not vary with speed.

The standard word PARIS for assessing speed has 50 units, of which 22 
are key down.  Therefore, the duty cycle is 44% for an average of 5 
characters per word.

Because some loggers reduce inter-word spacing from 7 to 6 units, the 
duty cycle becomes 22 in 49, which is approximately 45%.

These are worst-case duty-cycle values for contesters, because exchange 
elements (words) are generally shorter than 5 characters.  Callsigns 
with 6 or more characters will tend to increase duty cycles, but 
probably never more than 50%.

73,
Paul EI5DI