[NLRS] 222 and up

[Zack Widup]

That was my thought. There is only one person in this area active on 5760
that I know of. Fortunately he's usually a Rover, so I get to work him in
several grid squares.

73, Zack W9SZ


On Mon, Sep 26, 2016 at 8:00 PM, James Duffey <jamesduffey at comcast.net>
wrote:

>
>
> Gary - I cannot speak for the committee, but I provided them with some
> analysis that I did to see what made sense as far as QSO points, since the
> QSO points in the first release of the rules seemed out of whack to me. The
> QSO points are similar to, but not identical to the results of the analysis
> I did. There is nothing magical about what I did, and the conclusions could
> be different based on the same input.
>
> The short answer to your question is that there is relatively high
> activity on 2.3GHz and 10GHz, less activity on 3456MHz and 5760MHz.
>
> I wanted to see if the QSO points could be derived objectively. They can
> be, sort of. My assumption was that QSO points should be based on three
> things, 1) the SNR ratio decreases as the frequency increases for similarly
> equipped stations on the same band, and as scoring is distance based, the
> band QSO points should reflect this, 2) the contest should encourage
> activity on bands on which there is little activity and the QSO points
> should also reflect this, 3) the QSO points should reflect the difficultly
> of getting on the band and operating on the band.
>
> I can go into the gory details, but essentially I normalized everything to
> 1 at 432. I calculated SNR ratios based on a simple troposcatter model. For
> input I assumed that the equipment was the same on all bands, 60W to a 17
> ft Yagi (or equivalent) and sky noise (as much as possible) limited receive
> performance. Keeping the antenna the same size allows the capture area to
> increase with frequency, negating in part the decrease in SNR as frequency
> increases. This was the first adjustment I made. Yes I know that 60W on
> 10GHz is expensive, but it is available. More on that later.
>
> Activity levels were determined by normalizing last years results by band.
> This is one of the large reasons that the QSO points for 2304MHz and 10GHz
> are down from the 3446MHz and 5760MHz. There is a surprising, at least to
> me, large amount of activity on 10GHz which drops the QSO points calculated
> for this band.
>
> The difficulty of getting on the band is, of course, subjective, but I
> tried to approximate it objectively by comparing the cost of getting on
> each band. For that I considered the cost of a DEMI transverter (if
> available, on 1296MHz I used one of the SG labs transverter), Directive
> Systems antenna, and a preamp if necessary. This was not exact, there were
> some small variations in antenna gain and linear amplifier power, but it is
> possible to put together a plug and play 60W station with long Yagis and
> preamps if necessary from commercial sources, except on 2304GHz where no
> commercial amp is available, but one can be assembled with a little work
> with the PyroJoe boards. That surprised me a bit. In short, the cost of
> getting on bands from 222MHz to 1.2G are about the same, there is a step
> there, and another
>
> I then generated QSO points based on a multiplier that consisted of factor
> 1), and half of 2) and 3).
>
> Doing this provides set of QSO points similar to, but not identical to,
> what is in the rules. I assume that the committee underwent a similar
> analysis. You can combine these in various ways and I am not sure that any
> one way is better than the others.
>
> I posted this analysis on the VHFContesting Archive in May, when comments
> on the proposed rules were requested. That post is here:
>
> < http://lists.contesting.com/archives//html/VHFcontesting/
> 2016-05/msg00073.html >
>
> It is not an exact calculation, I doubt that is possible and depends a lot
> on what one considers important for input. There is nothing sacred about my
> calculations and I they are certainly open to other conclusions. I just
> wanted to see if one could take a stab at calculating these if not
> objectively, at least from a well defined starting point and realistic
> numbers.
>
> There are still some holes there, but you will get the general idea. I
> hope that the committee will look at the results of the suggested QSO
> points at the end of each contest and adjust them accordingly.
>
> Like I said, I cannot comment for the committee, but I did do an analysis
> myself and the QSO points the committee proposes make sense to me, even if
> they do not agree exactly with my numbers. I know that the nonmonotinicity
> and discontinuous nature of the points as a function of frequency bothers
> many people. I understand that, but there is no real reason that the QSO
> points should increase smoothly with frequency and good reasons, at least
> to me, for it not to. - Duffey KK6MC
>
>
> On Sep 26, 2016, at 6:04 PM, Gary Mohrlant <w0ghz at arrl.net> wrote:
>
> >
> >
> > Can someone tell me why 2.3ghz and 10ghz only have a band factor of 6.
> >
> >
> > Gary W0GHZ
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>
> --
> KK6MC
> James Duffey
> Cedar Crest NM
>
>
>
>
>
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