[SCCC] digital modes during FD

[Drew Arnett]

Anyone know of a breakdown of digital modes used during Field Day?
Email me if you do!

I was wondering if it was worth taking one for the team and
volunteering to work digital during FD to help our multi-multi score.
I'll RTTY contest all day long no complaints.  PSK31?  If not too many
folks run their brag tape macros during FD.  FT.  Well, yeah, maybe
I'm not that dedicated to the team.  :-)

Next best thing I took the last 20 years of FD summary data from the
results articles.  Here's a PDF with some fun plots:

     https://drive.google.com/file/d/19K_6t-HKbo8f984qUUe4q3NKYO7sgsQ8/view?usp=sharing

Fun to see trends prior to FT, the FT phenomenon, as well as the COVID-19 bump.

Some extra data from the last few years that is interesting to think about, too:

2019 -- entries:  3,113, participants:  36,420, total Qs:  1,095,969
2020 -- entries:  10213, participants:  18,886, total Qs:  1,862,985

Entries up 3X and but only 1/2 the participants.

3X stations on the air gave us 1.7X QSOs.

% of entries that are D, E, F class -- 2019:  46%, 2020:  82%
% of QSOs phone 2018 (baseline):  52%, 2019:  45%, 2020:  35%
Down 7% 2019 versus baseline and down 17% 2020 versus baseline.

There's interesting stuff in this data including if and how much
effort to spend on digital.  Will be interesting to see 2022 FD data
(a normal, non-COVID-19 bump  year I presume).

I'd encourage contest organizers to let folks send in logs with the
digital modes not all lumped into one category.  (For VHF+ events,
same for SSB versus FM, too.)  Their contest log analysis can do the
lumping instead of the entrants easily enough.  And that would be a
treasure trove of data to have to look at trends.

Best regards,

Drew
n7da