[VHFcontesting] re. W3ZZ's QST contesting article (Tom Carney)

George Fremin III geoiii at kkn.net
Mon Apr 7 00:00:26 EDT 2003


On Mon, Apr 07, 2003 at 01:51:06AM +0000, jon jones wrote:
> >"Based on the data
> Gene presented, I don't doubt there has been a decline in participation."

I think there are several things going on with VHF log submissions.

> too. I figured it was maybe due to the poor prop. in the last couple of 
> contests.

I think poor propagation tends to reduce log submissions by the
causal guy - who might only make a handful of contacts 
during poor conditons but I think there are other forces.

Namely high sun spot activity. 

Since 1996 the sunspots have been on a steady increase.

Here are the smoothed sunspot numbers:

1975  15.5
1976  12.6
1977  27.5
1978  92.5
1979 155.4
1980 154.6
1981 140.4
1982 115.9
1983  66.6
1984  45.9
1985  17.9
1986  13.4
1987  29.4
1988 100.2
1989 157.6
1990 142.6
1991 145.7
1992  94.3
1993  54.6
1994  29.9
1995  17.5
1996   8.6
1997  21.5
1998  64.3
1999  93.3
2000 119.6
2001 111.0


This is almost an exact mirror of the decrease in VHF log submissions.

K9AKS made a post to this list where he gave use the log submisson numbers.

You can find his entire post here:
http://lists.contesting.com/pipermail/vhfcontesting/2002-September/001029.html

But let me pull a few things from it:

 Here are some numbers.  First, the number of logs submitted for the
three ARRL VHF/UHF contests since 1975 from QST write-ups (note a few of
these numbers are estimates or interpolations, but the overall trends
should be correct):

	Jan	June	Sept
1975	590	340	285
 	630	410	230
 	780	490	340
 	840	480	330
 	890	510	410
1980	995	500	380
 	970	540	390
 	940	590	448
 	950	510	436
 	800	590	450
1985	880	530	434
 	890	630	460
 	840	691	386
 	845	650	400
 	930	650	425
1990	910	600	439
 	912	480	415
 	958	610	591
 	1036	818	621
 	1200	820	714
1995	1150	837	720
 	1150	921	710
 	1020	837	752
 	1010	800	700
 	900	701	606
2000	820	710	582
 	799	680	553

If you take this number and put them in a spreadsheet and graph 
them some we can see some very intresting things.

Here is a graph of June contest log submissions compaired to the SSN:

http://www.kkn.net/~k5tr/misc/vhfcharts/june-ssn.gif

I always do the june contest but being an active HF contester
my January and September activty has only really happened
at the bottom of the sunspot cycle - I suspect there
or a few more like me out there.


Next here are the graphs of log submissions over the years:

http://www.kkn.net/~k5tr/misc/vhfcharts/janvhf.gif
http://www.kkn.net/~k5tr/misc/vhfcharts/junevhf.gif
http://www.kkn.net/~k5tr/misc/vhfcharts/septvhf.gif

The black liner line is a trendline - as you can see the 
trend going forward is positive - so I think it is still
too early to say these contests are sick.


In looking at the last few June contests you will note that 
the years with poor Eskip - log susbmissions are down.
I think this is to be expected.

1995 	837
1996 	921  This year is high because the E-skip was really really good.
1997 	837
1998 	800  This year the eskip and tropo were good
1999 	701  Eskip was bad
2000	710  Eskip was better for some but overall bad.
2001 	880  

While I am always up for finding ways to get more folks on the radio
and also to get them to send in logs, I do not think that we can
yet say that these contests are on the decline.

It would be intresting to look at the logs submitted to see 
how many unique callsigns show up each year in the stations worked.
That might give us anohter gauge as to the health of the 
VHF contests and of VHF activity.

As far as getting folks that do get on the radio to send in logs...
well I am not sure what to do.  Maybe if all of us talk all 
the locals into sending in their logs - that might be a good start.

I know that here in Texas there is a VHF/UHF club that has
a number of member who make contacts in all of the VHF contests 
but many or indeed most of them do not send in their logs. 

Maybe it is too much trouble or maybe they just dont care to 
send in a log.  I must admit that I fall into this catagory 
often in contests where I only get on for a few hours.  This is 
a habit that I have been trying to change in myself.
  
-- 
George Fremin III - K5TR
geoiii at kkn.net
http://www.kkn.net/~k5tr




-- 
George Fremin III - K5TR
geoiii at kkn.net
http://www.kkn.net/~k5tr




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