[VHFcontesting] [VHF] Announcing the VHF Distance Scoring 2009 Report

[kevin kaufhold]

Terry: 

Thanks for your comments, and good question.  There was a lot of discussion on the pros and cons of band weighting in dx events (and many other controversial areas, too!).  The general idea is to use band weights instead of the current QSO points per band. This aligns with EU, VK, and ZL experience on multi-band distance events. 

We ran five different simulations involving logs from recent VHF contests, the largest being 40 logs or so collected from the 2009 June VHF QSO Party. Our simulations showed that for the exact same QSO's, the lower bands of 6 and 2 had a much greater effect on total scores with distance methods than with the current rules. This was true with or without any Es on 6 or enhanced tropo on 2.  Basically, the lower bands took on far greater importance in a distance event.  In order to bring the percentages of contribution of each band back to a similar range as with the current rules, a band multiplier was necessary.  Even with a gradually increasing band multiplier, the lower bands still had somewhat more importance or contribution to distance scores than they do under the current system.  

There was concern expressed along the same lines as your thoughts. However, with distance scoring being additive by distance only, it was felt that the multiplicative nature of the current system (QSO points * grids) would at least be eliminated. Several members of the working group believed that it is the multiplicative nature of the current rules that provides the real advantage to the grid seekers. With only an additive system in place, it all comes down to the quest for long haul contacts. Nothing else matters, in fact, so a grid dance would only be useful at long range.  Pack operations would have to spread out considerably to do well in a distance system, and that probably is a good thing to see develop. I suspect that packs would still exist with a dx system, just possibly evolve into a coordinated effort of portables to work each other across valleys and mountains. Something like what already occurs in the 10G, so it is not a
 big stretch to imagine quasi-clubs or corridated teams running multiple portable operations at long distances on all bands up thru 10G. More analysis is certainly warranted in this area before anything is hatched in a live test.   

We also thought about work effort in distances achieved. Without  a band mult, a 1,000 km QSO on 2 meters would be worth the same distance points (i.e. 1,000 points) as a 1,000 km QSO on 432 or 1.2G.  We wanted a reward for working the long distances on the higher bands, so that a 1,000 km on 432, 1.2G, etc woudl be worth more than the same distance on 6 or 2. We quibbled among ourselves as to relative weights, but decided to at least put something out there for further study and experimentation. The entire VHF community could then decide from a policy perspective how much more of a "work effort" reward should be given to the upper bands, if at all.  Give too little, and the lower bands dominate. Give too much, and the microwaves then generate ridiculous amounts of points.  Weighting becomes a balancing act to pull off right.   

The simulations maintained at the yahoo user's group has many more statistical details on all of this. The 2009 Report goes into extensive discussion on the rationale for each of the nine recommendations, as well as constituting the "minutes" of our deliberations. Please feel free to join the group and look at the Report.  

Since the initial message had bad word processing formatting, here are the links again:

http://www.w9smc.com/SMC%20VHF/DistanceScoring2009Report.pdf

for the report, and 

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/VHFDistanceScoring/

for the yahoo user's group.

Tnx so much for your interest.  


Kevin
W9GKA  

  



________________________________
From: "w8zn at comcast.net" <w8zn at comcast.net>
To: kevin kaufhold <kkaufhold at yahoo.com>
Cc: vhfcontesting at contesting.com; vhf at w6yx.stanford.edu
Sent: Monday, September 28, 2009 2:04:53 PM
Subject: Re: [VHF] Announcing the VHF Distance Scoring 2009 Report


Hi Kevin and the working group.

I applaud your group and wish you the very best luck. This is a step in the right direction to equalize the scoring and help put an end to some of the pack roving that helps no one else but the participants, once it is no longer profitable to just work at grid corners, it will probably go away.

I do have one comment about item 4B, a weighted score for upper bands. Why isn't it enough that another band yields another contact and distance mult? Some time ago when a microwave station was entirely built from surplus or home brew design, I would agree that it was worth more points. But with DEM and DB6NT offering off the shelf ready built systems, these bands don't really offer much more challenge than fighting QRM on 144.200. There is a small amount of extra work pointing a dish that doesn't exist with a 3 element 6m beam but if the signal is there, you work it and in some cases, I've found a 1w signal on 10 GHz is EASIER to work than a 100w signal on 6m. As evident in most of the ARRL contests, a station that maximizes their microwaves Q's will almost always dominate even if they don't have a decent lower 4 band score, this seems counter to increase activity. In HF, you don't get extra points for a 160m or 10m contact, which are much harder than
 a 20m Q, VHF and above should be the same.

Thanks again for your fine efforts,

Terry