[CQ-Contest] calculating CW duty cycle

[Barry W2UP]

The overall duty cycle DOES vary with speed because the pauses after a CQ,
between S&P QSOs, etc. are relatively fixed spaces independent of speed.
SO, if the CW is faster, there will be less transmit time relative to
listening time.

Barry W2UP

On Mon, Jul 4, 2022 at 7:19 AM Paul O'Kane <pokane at ei5di.com> wrote:

> 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
>
>
>
>
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