[RTTY] WPX and strategy...

[Scott Nichols]

Hi Patrick...

This strategy of beating 20m to death worked for me because of 3 things...

1) I can point my high-band antennas at EU (55 degrees) and work the US (230 
degrees) off the back of the beam with all their antennas pointed at EU (and 
therefore me)...This works great because of my geographic location...I 
therefore had the best of all worlds...Higher rates, loads of EU 3-pointers 
and access to the 2 biggest mult locations (US and EU) at the same time...

2) My antennas are far superior on the high bands than the low bands...I can 
easily better than double EU QSO rates on 20 than I can on 40/80...

3)20m is where many of the casual guys are in these contests...I worked 
plenty of very low number guys...This is where I got the additional mults I 
believe...

It was really an "all or nothing" gamble for me, because in order to pull 
off my "beat up 20m" strategy, I had to give up most of Sat evening on the 
low bands, due to time constraints...If 20 had have been dead, I would have 
suffered...

Now, if I was in UA9 land or G/F/EA land, it likely would be totally 
different...

I guess it's all about taking advantage of one's advantages...

Now, all that being said, my score is only 8,000 better than last year...Go 
figure...

Oh the fun we have!!!

73, Scott VE1OP

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "pat_f6irf" <f6irf at free.fr>
To: <rtty at contesting.com>
Sent: Tuesday, February 14, 2006 4:18 PM
Subject: [RTTY] WPX and strategy...


> Scott, VE1OP wrote...
>
>>>My strategy was to beat up 20 metres and get as many high-rate 3-point EU 
>>>as
>>>possible, as opposed to working the low bands for lower-rate higher-point
>>>QSO's...I think it worked...My avg points per qso is down a little from 
>>>last
>>>year, and I have a few less qso's, but the mult count is way up over last
>>>year...
>>
>>
>
> Hi Scott,
> Very interesting for me, because I used a deliberatly opposite strategy 
> based
> on a high pts/q, thus on low bands...
> My point was that it might be easier to increase QSO points by 10% rather
> than multipliers by 10%... (both resulting in a 10% score increase)
> To take an example if you are at avg 4000pts /500 mults resulting in a 
> 2Mpts score,
> is it easier to add 400 pts, or 50 mults ?  of course the answer is not 
> that
> obvious (because the 2 terms are linked - adding Q's also add mults and 
> vice versa),
> but I think that at least for us in EU, spending more time on 80m is the 
> right
> choice... (40m being the obvious 1st choice during night, and 20m the 
> obvious 1st
> choice during day)
>
>
> Phil GU0SUP wrote
>
>>>One thought about WPX rules............... I wonder how much the rule 
>>>about
>>>mults count once, not per band, made folk sit on 20m and not bother with 
>>>15?
>>
>>
> Hi Phil,
> This point is also interesting...yes you are right, I deliberatly forgot 
> abt 15m!
> To increase the number of mults, you have 2 choices 1) spend more time on 
> a given band
> 2) move to a band which opens new geographical areas (thus new prefixes)
> My point of view  is:  With the conditions we have at the moment, 15m has 
> very
> little to offer => low rate, low point/Q, and limited remote geographical 
> areas,
> with poor condx to JA and only East-Coast USA (both areas actualy better 
> on 20m).
> So for me the answer is obvious: don't loose much time on 15m (and if you 
> have 2 radios,
> better use the second radio on 40, looking for 4 pts EU QSO's, as activity 
> remains quite
> high even during daytime, and you can get near-stations, impossible to 
> reach at night time
> for ex, for me south Germany, benelux, netherlands at <500kms all easy 4 
> pts QSO's).
>
> All this to say, that it may not that obvious when looking at the rules, 
> but the WPX is a
> highly strategic contest...  what makes it so interesting are 1) the band 
> weighting factor
> 2) the "off-time" periods... 3) the fact that mults are only counted 
> once...
> Change only one of the above, and you will destroy most of the strategic 
> aspect of this
> contest, and what makes it so interesting...
>
> I have tried to summarize all this with graphs which I have put on my 
> blog.
> Of course I do not pretend that I found an universal answer; it also 
> depends on  band
> conditions, and on your QTH, but  it just happened that this strategy, 
> which I could not
> try last year due to bad weather, worked quite well for me this year...
>
> Patrick
> http://f6irf.blogspot.com/
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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