[NLRS] 222 and up

Tue Sep 27 08:42:23 EDT 2016

I know quite a few people who have bands up through 1296 and then 10 GHz.
They have skipped the bands in between. I don't know if it's easier for
them to put together a 10 GHz station, or if it's because most of their
local guys are on 10 GHz, or what. But I haven't been able to talk some of
them into also building stations for the three intervening bands.

There's very few of us on 24 GHz around here and only a couple people
within driving distance on 47 and 78 GHz.

73, Zack W9SZ

On Mon, Sep 26, 2016 at 11:42 PM, Ed WB0VHF <wb0vhf at gmail.com> wrote:

>
>
> Just a couple of thoughts:
>
>
> If the points on bands are based on the (current) band activity to
> encourage more participation, will the point distribution change if the
> band activity changes? If so, then a scoring nightmare. If not, then later
> on we will ask "why are the points this way" and the answer will be "in the
> old days...". Also not a good situation to be in. I do understand the
> desire to make scoring encourage operations, but what about the aftermath?
>
>
> Also, as to why the spike in operation at 10G? Isn't there a 10G and up
> contest. Reason to drive more operation there enough to "skew" the norms?
>
>
> In the end, just glad that they've got it back on the calendar.
>
>
> 73,
>
> Ed
>
> WB0VHF
>
>
>
>
> On 9/26/2016 8:00 PM, James Duffey 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/201
>> 6-05/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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>
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