[UK-CONTEST] AFS- statistics

[Clive Whelan]

I'm not at all a fan of AFS as a contest, believing it to be too 
unidimensional, but it certainly generates a very high level of 
activity- this cannot be a bad thing.

I've owned a Perseus rx ( an awesome device) for some time with the 
intention of implementing Skimmer. However, until recently the two would 
not talk to each other. The recent release of Skimmer v1.5 has addressed 
this problem, and as I was not going to be active in the event I decided 
to give the combo an outing. I ran the pair in conjunction with 
Spotcollector from the DXlab suite which generates an Access database of 
the spots. My database expertise is poor to vanishing,  but those of you 
who- like me- are geeks at heart,  might be interested in this 
Moxonesque view of the event.

Rx: Perseus
Antenna: Butternut HF9V, ground mounted
Computer: A rather tired Pentium dual core which crashes more than 
Jacques Villeneuve!

Total number of Skimmer spots between 14 and 18z: 3377
UK stations only in contest segment: 2569

This means that Skimmer was decoding a CW signal on average every 4.2 
seconds

Skimmer was set to ignore the same call on the same frequency within 60 
minutes, so that a frequency hogger would only be spotted a maximum of 4 
times. Equally a QSY'er would be ignored unless he/she moved at least 
2kHz. These parameters are adjustable but those are the defaults.

Strongest signals: SNR in 700Hz bandwidth

G3UJE +60dB
GM3POI+59dB
GM3WOJ+57dB
GM3JKS+57dB

The weakest signal decoded was +1dB and Skimmer generally won't decode 
below the noise level. Of course the human brain will, and so I estimate 
+1dB at subjectively S4/5. This means that a +60dB signal is, well quite 
loud actually! There is a preponderance of GM signals in the signal 
strength league table which is probably a function of the ( extreme) 
lack of high angle acceptance of the Butternut.

Fastest CW speed decoded: 36 w.p.m. from G3UJE
Slowest CW speed decoded: 15 w.p.m. from G2AFV who is not normally a QRS 
op. , and paradoxically NOT in QRS alley but on 3515. Speeds in QRS 
alley were generally significantly above this, mostly >20 wpm.

Number of stations spotted at least twice: 386
This is probably a slight underestimate of the number of stations active 
in the contest.

Most active S&P ers:

By this I mean those spotted the greatest number of times by Skimmer, 
which means at intervals of >2kHz.

G3RXP   18
G3SEM   18
G3XMM   15

I must say that these figures seem quite low to me. If I enter super 
geek mode, I could record the actual frequency of each spot for each 
station, but life is quite short.

What Perseus can also do is to record the whole event over the whole 
spectrum, which then can be replayed later " as live". This is a 
marvellous tool for the adjudicators. However, why anyone else would 
wish to do this I really don't know.

OK you can go an have a lie down now!

73


Clive
GW3NJW