[Elecraft] WRTC 2014 - Congratulations, Elecraft!...(and firmware update)

[Fred Jensen]

I think you're correct Dave.  Unlike all other contests, WRTC is 
refereed and everyone uses identical antennas and power ... about as 
level a playing field as you could ever create.  WRTC *is* structured to 
focus on operator skills vs station excellence, 100W is 100W in that 
situation, it doesn't really matter which rig generated the RF. 
Mandating a specific radio would put all the ops who don't use that 
radio in everyday contesting at a big disadvantage.

There could be some small advantages on receive, I imagine they were 
confronted with pile-ups earlier in the contest, but eventually, they 
likely worked everyone they heard, and I doubt there would be much 
difference in what one could hear on a K3 vs a 7600, FT1000, or other 
radios.  They're all either current state-of-the-art radios or close.

The one factor that using different radios does not control for is 
spurious emissions such as key clicks and phase noise.  There *is* a 
wide difference in those between the radios.  Don't know if that would 
turn out to be an issue in the WRTC environment, although I sure know it 
was when my "neighbor" Jack, KF6T, was running a Yaesu rig with serious 
phase noise problems.  Of course, if clicks and phase noise was an issue 
at WRTC, it would impact everyone else negatively.

73,

Fred K6DGW
- Northern California Contest Club
- CU in the 2014 Cal QSO Party 4-5 Oct 2014
- www.cqp.org

On 7/25/2014 3:43 PM, dave wrote:
> I think that the rig is not very important. One tidbit to support this
> theory, although far from conclusive, is to compare what happened to the
> OE3DIA team in 2010 vs 2014.
>
> In 2010 there was a nasty lightning storm the took out both of this
> teams K3's. They were knocked out about 1 hour into the contest. But
> Yaesu had some reps on site and they had a pair of FT857's which they
> loaned to the team. They lost about an hour in the switchover. So they
> ran for 23 hours while the other teams ran for 24.
>
> If you compare their score at the end of the contest to the other teams
> after 23 hours (the hour-by-hour scores was available on the Russian web
> site for a while after the contest) they were in about the middle of the
> pack. This is using K3's for 1 hour and FT857's for 22 hours.
>
> In 2014 I see no notes about anyone suffering such a loss and the OE3DIA
> team finished 22nd out of 59. Again about the middle of the pack. I
> think this somewhat better than their 23 hour comparison in 2010, but
> not a lot better.
>
> This would tend to indicate that - when in the hands of very competent
> operators - a pair of lowly FT857's is nearly as good as a pair of K3's.
>
> Now, don't get me wrong here, I'm not saying the FT857 is as good as a
> K3, it is *not*. No doubt about that. In fact, it is not as good as a
> K2. I have those two sitting here side by side and I can assure you that
> the K2 is the superior rig. What it says to me is that the K3 and others
> of its class are somewhat overkill. The lowly FT857 is 'nearly good
> enough'. Certainly not great, but 'nearly good enough'.
>
> 73 de dave
> ab9ca/4