CQ WW Blog

May 3, 2014April 10, 2018 K5ZD Announcements

CQ WW 2013 Results now Online

The results of both modes of the 2013 CQ WW DX Contest have been posted to the CQ Magazine web site.

The online score database cqww.com has been loaded with the 2013 scores. There are many ways you can enjoy the scores here on the site:

View the online database. http://www.cqww.com/score_db.htm

Entering a call will show you all CQ WW entries where that callsign was used for the station or listed as an operator. We have made an enhancement so that you can now search for multiple calls in one request. Simply separate the callsigns you want to search for with a comma. Example, If I want to search for K5ZD, WB5QDW, and WA4ZHU then I would enter “K5ZD, WB5QDW, WA4ZHU” The results listing will show the callsign matches in bold. This feature should be useful for anyone who has changed callsigns over the years.

Find your results and download an electronic certificate in Adobe pdf format. Certificates are only available for 2012 and later AND for entries that were received by the log submission deadline.

There were two new Overlay categories added to CQWW in 2013: CLASSIC and ROOKIE. Since these are competitions that run in parallel to the traditional categories, we decided to present the results separately as well. Visit http://www.cqww.com/overlayscores.htm to see the Overlay scores. This one page does it all. You will need to select Contest Mode (SSB/CW), Overlay (CLASSIC/ROOKIE), Power Level (ALL, HIGH, LOW), and Year (2013). The Cert links on the Overlay results are for the Overlay category certificates. If you entered an Overlay category, you have the opportunity to get a traditional category certificate and another one for the Overlay category.

The Records page has the all time records for the years included in the database (currently 1977-2013). Always fun to see who holds the records at the World, Continent, and Country levels. USA, Canada, Japan, and Russia also show records by call area. You can also view all time records by CQ Zone.

There is also a page that lets you see the historical winners for a category/geography over the years. Always fun to see how scores have changed over time.

Want to see how good the best operators are? You can view Log Checking Reports of the World high scorers at http://cqww.com/lcr/ You can also view all submitted logs at http://cqww.com/publiclogs/ Might be able to learn a few strategy tips in there. Especially if you have a copy of your own LCR and try to figure out how a logging error might have been caused.

For those participating in the club competition, there is an Excel spreadsheet that shows the entries and points that were used to calculate the final results. You can find the link to the file from the Results page under 2013 CW.

You can see how activity is growing in CQWW over the years both at the world level and for your country. Visti the statistics page. http://www.cqww.com/stats.htm

The score database will continue to grow as N2NC and his team continue typing in the old results. As of today, including the years 1977 to 2013, there are 144,409 entries in the SSB database. There are 135,246 entries in the CW database. We look forward to increasing that number when the 2014 edition of the CQ WW Contest arrives in October and November!

If you find any errors or corrections that need to be made, please send them at: https://cqww.com/contact.

April 24, 2014April 10, 2018 K5ZD Announcements, CW, Log checking

CQ WW CW 2013 Log Checking Reports

An email with a link to the Log Checking Report has been sent to everyone who submitted a log for the CQ WW DX Contest CW 2013. The Log Checking Report includes a complete summary of how the final score was calculated and any errors or deductions that may have occurred. We make these reports available so participants can have the opportunity to learn from their mistakes.

How does your accuracy compare to others? The chart below shows the number of errors by percentage and the cumulative percentage of entrants in that bin.

Table. Numeric values for chart

Error Rate bin	Number of logs	Cumulative %
<0.100%	386	5.19%
0.500%	113	6.71%
1.000%	565	14.30%
2.000%	1658	36.58%
3.000%	1347	54.68%
4.000%	921	67.05%
5.000%	584	74.90%
10.000%	1305	92.43%
20.000%	477	98.84%
30.000%	68	99.76%
40.000%	17	99.99%
More	1	100.00%

For example, there were 1658 logs with an error rate between 1.0 and 2.0%. 36.5% of the total entrants had an error rate of 2.0% or less. The median error rate was 2.7%. This is an amazingly good result when you consider the total number of contacts made during the contest.

A few more statistics from the contest log checking.

 7,442 logs total
5,505,384 QSO total
 205 different countries
 39,950 ( 0.7%) QSO with unique calls
 22,495 (56.3%) unique calls busted 
 55,672 ( 1.0%) dupes
 323 ( 0.0%) Cabrillo format errors
4,871,227 (88.5%) QSO checked against another log
4,729,508 (97.1%) QSO checked good against another log
 73,087 ( 1.5%) busted calls
 22,165 ( 0.5%) busted exchange
 46,467 ( 1.0%) not in log

The scores in the LCR are what will appear in the official results. The results for CQ WW SSB and CW 2013 are scheduled to appear in the May 2014 issue of CQ Magazine.

Please send any questions or comments about your log checking report at: https://cqww.com/contact.

April 20, 2014May 21, 2014 K5ZD CW

How fast do people send in WW CW?

Bob Wilson N6TV did some analysis using new columns in the raw data archived by the Reverse Beacon Network.

We finally have an answer to that age old question, “So, how fast do people send Morse code in CQ WW CW?”

Answer: about 30 WPM

Shown below is the average CW speed of all the RBN spots, by continent (of the DX).

Those African DXpeditioners really know how to QRQ (especially EF8U). And yes, most slow down a bit on Sunday, even if conditions improve:

2013 CQ WW CW, Saturday

——– Speed (WPM) ——-

Cont Max Min Avg StdDev Spots

AF 53 8 34.0 4.3 61707

AS 47 5 30.8 4.1 229914

EU 53 2 31.1 3.6 1578113

NA 51 1 31.1 3.8 772140

OC 40 7 30.2 3.6 29966

SA 49 4 31.8 4.2 124923

—- — — —- —- ——-

Tot 53 1 31.2 3.8 2796763

2013 CQ WW CW, Sunday

——– Speed (WPM) ——-

Cont Max Min Avg StdDev Spots

AF 50 6 32.9 4.3 66334

AS 47 2 30.2 3.8 227485

EU 51 2 30.2 3.5 1607793

NA 51 2 29.9 3.6 843113

OC 41 5 29.7 3.3 31278

SA 47 6 31.4 3.8 137572

—- — — —- —- ——-

Tot 51 2 30.2 3.6 2913575

Do people send slower on the low bands? Yes, the lower the band, the slower they go.

2013 CQ WW CW, Saturday

——– Speed (WPM) ——-

Band Max Min Avg StdDev Spots

10m 53 5 31.8 4.0 341152

15m 53 4 31.7 3.7 505217

20m 51 1 31.6 3.7 574727

40m 53 1 31.1 3.7 868980

80m 51 2 30.1 3.5 403785

160m 43 2 28.3 3.5 102902

—- — — —- —- ——-

Tot 53 1 31.2 3.8 2796763

2013 CQ WW CW, Sunday

——– Speed (WPM) ——-

Band Max Min Avg StdDev Spots

10m 49 4 30.9 3.9 278449

15m 50 3 31.0 3.7 484538

20m 51 2 30.8 3.5 694123

40m 49 3 30.0 3.4 888032

80m 46 2 29.4 3.3 443191

160m 47 4 27.3 3.3 125242

—- — — —- —- ——-

Tot 51 2 30.2 3.6 2913575

The RBN collects data from receivers around the world and stores it into a database. These reports include call, frequency, signal-to-noise ratio, and CW speed. More information about the Reverse Beacon Network is available at http://www.reversebeacon.net/

Thanks to N6TV for sharing his analysis.

April 13, 2014April 10, 2018 K5ZD Announcements, Log checking, SSB

CQ WW SSB 2013 Log Checking Reports

Everyone who submitted a log for the CQ WW DX Contest SSB 2013 has been mailed an encrypted link to view their Log Checking Report for the contest. The reports were sent to the email address that submitted the log and to any email address included within the log (using the EMAIL tag). If you have not received your report, please check your spam filters. You can request the link at: https://cqww.com/contact.

You can view a sample Log Checking Report here: k5zd.rpt

Some statistics from the log checking process:

8,482 logs total
5,551,137 qso total
 228 different countries
 58,328 ( 1.1%) qso with unique calls
 29,914 (51.3%) unique calls busted 
 45,380 ( 0.8%) dupes
 443 ( 0.0%) Cabrillo format errors
4,547,210 (81.9%) qso checked against another log
4,416,925 (97.1%) qso checked good against another log
 73,173 ( 1.6%) busted calls
 19,108 ( 0.4%) busted exchange
 38,004 ( 0.8%) not in log

It is rather remarkable that almost 82% of the 5 million contacts reported were able to be cross checked with other logs. Thanks to everyone who submitted a log and helped make this level of cross checking possible. Even more amazing is that 97.1% of those contacts cross checked as being good.

The log checking report provides full details on how the final score for each entry was calculated. It shows the raw score before checking and the reductions. Each Not-In-Log, busted callsign, and busted exchange are listed.

Unique QSOs are also listed for information purposes. A unique QSO is one with a callsign that was not reported by any other station. Over half (51.3%) of these were found to be busted calls. But, experience says these unique QSOs are probably bad calls more than 90% of the time.

We have introduced a new Error Rate calculation to the reports this year. This number represents the percentage of contacts that were found to be in error. It does not include duplicate QSOs. This number is a more accurate representation of accuracy than looking at the percent score reduction, which can be much higher for smaller logs where the penalties and lost multipliers can have a higher impact than they do for large logs.

You can see the Error Rate number as part of the score summary section.

    1.3% Score reduction
    0.3% Error Rate based on claimed and final qso counts
       5 (0.2%) calls copied incorrectly
       0 (0.0%) exchanges copied incorrectly
       0 (0.0%) band change violations
       6 (0.2%) not in log
      15 (0.5%) duplicates (Removed without penalty)
       1 (0.0%) calls unique to this log only (not removed)

The average Error Rate for all logs was 3.60%. Use the chart below to see how your error rate compares to others. The blue lines show the number of logs with that error rate. The red line shows the cumulative number of logs at that error rate or lower. Someone with a 9% error rate was in the top 73% of all entries.

Error Rate	Count	Cumulative % of all entries
<1.0%	2360	13.91%
2.0%	2237	27.10%
3.0%	1952	38.61%
4.0%	1614	48.12%
5.0%	1218	55.30%
6.0%	998	61.18%
7.0%	830	66.08%
8.0%	735	70.41%
9.0%	575	73.80%
10.0%	515	76.83%
11.0%	446	79.46%
12.0%	340	81.47%
13.0%	325	83.38%
14.0%	295	85.12%
15.0%	263	86.67%
16.0%	211	87.92%
17.0%	229	89.27%
18.0%	157	90.19%
19.0%	147	91.06%
20.0%	138	91.87%
21.0%	118	92.57%
22.0%	87	93.08%
23.0%	91	93.62%
24.0%	89	94.14%
25.0%	93	94.69%
26.0%	55	95.01%
27.0%	55	95.34%
28.0%	58	95.68%
29.0%	43	95.93%
30.0%	48	96.22%
31.0%	47	96.49%
32.0%	47	96.77%
33.0%	43	97.02%
34.0%	38	97.25%
35.0%	32	97.44%
36.0%	27	97.59%
37.0%	28	97.76%
38.0%	19	97.87%
39.0%	20	97.99%
40.0%	28	98.15%
41.0%	19	98.27%
42.0%	10	98.33%
43.0%	13	98.40%
44.0%	19	98.51%
45.0%	19	98.63%
46.0%	11	98.69%
47.0%	15	98.78%
48.0%	15	98.87%
49.0%	11	98.93%
50.0%	10	98.99%
>50.0%	171	100.00%

Please send any questions or comments at: https://cqww.com/contact.