[UK-CONTEST] RSGB 80mCC DATA Contests

[Ian White GM3SEK]

Steve Knowles wrote:
>
>While it's strictly correct to say that nobody knows what the winning 
>strategy is, it's possible to make a very educated guess and to plan 
>your operating accordingly.  I have two April entrants who have 
>confidently stated that they have cracked the system - time will reveal 
>all!
>
>Any time you would like to make a few data QSOs (or even submit a log) 
>you would be very welcome to join in the fun.
>

I join in whenever I can. We are usually out for almost all the CC 
evenings, but I turn up for Datamodes and CW whenever we're home 
(leaving the option for my wife  to do the SSB).

As a serious RTTY contester (while obviously having no personal stake in 
the overall results of the CC series), I tend to use the Datamodes 
evenings to sharpen up my RTTY contesting skills. But the so-called 
"normalization" process has an unintended consequence: if someone 
focuses on RTTY and runs away from the pack, while no other entrant has 
done the same for PSK, the effect of the normalization formula is to 
devalue RTTY relative to PSK in *everybody's* overall score.

This  happened in January, February and March this year (for March you 
can blame me)... but it could also happen the other way around. If 
someone decided to focus exclusively on PSK and ran away with that mode, 
while all the RTTY enthusiasts happened to take the evening off, the 
unintended consequence would be to devalue PSK in everybody's overall 
score instead.

That means the *true* optimum balance of RTTY vs PSK cannot be 
determined by analysing past logs. The optimum for the next session will 
pivot on the actions of two unknown individuals on the night.

I'm sorry, but a rule that has such unintended and unpredictable 
consequences just cannot be right. Normalization is fine for levelling 
out the values of a large number of CC sessions over the entire season; 
but it won't work to level out the profound differences between RTTY and 
PSK contesting.



-- 

73 from Ian GM3SEK