[VHFcontesting] Good places for VHF Contesting?

[kb8u vhf]

You could use geographic information system software and:
1. Load in 3-D topographical information for the whole region
2. Load in the location of all known stations and what ERP and antenna height they have.
3. From each point in #1:
  Compute the path loss from that point to each station in #2
  If the path loss is low enough, add it to a "theoretical score" for that point
4. the point with the highest "theoretical score" is "the best".

Step 3 may take "a very, very long time" so you would probably need to minimize the number of locations checked by just choosing the top 100,000 highest points in the region.
It also ignores practical concerns like accessibility or ownership so if that is a concern then you could just load in places you could actually operate from.

It also ignores variables like known good tropo paths and man-made noise.  That is much harder to quantify so "the best" should be left in quotes!  Of course #2 is also going to be only an approximation, too.

Food for thought. 

73,  Russ  KB8U

> Date: Tue, 4 Aug 2009 03:55:19 -0700 (PDT)
> From: "Renner, PY7RP" <py7rp at yahoo.com.br>
> Subject: [VHFcontesting] Good places for VHF Contesting?
> To: vhfcontesting at contesting.com
> Message-ID: <640713.23524.qm at web33202.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
> 
> Hello Folks,
> 
> I am making a study about good places for VHF Contesting.
> I wanna prove that there is a good place, the optimum place
> to setup a station and this place has the biggest probability
> of getting a good high score instead of others.
> 
> The study of case is being made on the Brazilian VHF Contest
> called "CB144". The score formula is based on the sum of
> all distances between contacted grids, multiplied by the number
> of contacted stations.
> 
> Has anyone ever saw any study like that?
> 
> 73 Renner
> PY7RP
> 
*****************

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