Counting Contesters & Ranking Loggers: Tim Shoppa N3QE
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- Опубліковано 12 вер 2024
- What happens when you cross an ardent contester, a former contesting columnist for CQ magazine and a lifelong analytic? You get a deep dive analysis of how many contesters are in the world and a ranking of the ebbs and flows of the world's most popular logging systems over the past several years. Tim Shoppa N3QE breaks his conclusions down with supporting charts and statistics and a reference to work done by past ARRL CEO Dave Sumner K1ZZ who determined the number of amateur radio operators in the world back in 2011 (He estimated 4 million.). Join the show to learn how Tim looks at numbers and what he concludes. 73, Kevin W1DED
Interesting insights!
Great interview with Tim!! And Tim, you ARE indeed a well known (high scoring) contester, likely one of the most prolific for having a primary antenna as a wire!! I truly enjoyed watching this interview!! Much appreciation and thanks to you, Kevin for this and your many other excellent interviews.
Thanks for another interesting podcast! Very interesting observations and I enjoyed listening to you guys.
According to Tim's guess that we have ~ 4 million HAM's, than ~20 % are from the USA. Many countries have small local contests which have much higher "in-country" attendance than your big 4 or 6. CQWW CW for example has between 10-20 ZL-participants while our ZL- fieldday has probably two to three times as many ZL's taking part. What I'm saying is that there are many more "casual" contesters than what you see in the logs of the big ones.
The WRTC logger list is of little value. Each WRTC limits the logger SW allowed to handful of programs and excluding all others. Many of the casual contesters use their normal QSO logging SW (and not a contest logger) when they hand out a few numbers in a contest. Afterwards they export an ADIF to a Contest logger to create a Cabrillo file for the sponsor. That has to be a freeware (e.g. N1MM+) as they don't spend money on this. The Cabrillo file only contains the SW version of the program used to create it. This can but must not be the program used for logging.
I see a lot of EU- contesters moving from WinTest to DXLog due to faster implementation of new features (mainly around SO2R) and faster bug fixing.
73 and keep the content coming
Holger
Tim, thanks for joining Kevin for this interview. I really enjoyed your back story along with the statistical details. And like many others, thanks for all the contacts over the years. 👍 The stats on the contest loggers towards the end of the interview was fascinating. Very interesting to see CT and TRlog progression and at the same time, the innovations by CT and TRLog live on. And of course TR4W lives on and is popular. A big hat tip to K1EA and N6TR for their contributions. Max NG7M
Tim puts up a great score each contest. His signal impresses me when all others don’t.
Interesting stats. Regardless HOAs, a random wire or Rybakov antenna in the attic can work pretty well. 73, VA2NW
Interesting
I would be interested in hearing the rest of the teams view which logger they prefer and why. I was surprised by DXLog and how big it has become. Is it better than N1MM and if so, how?
DXLog and N1MM+ are free (and very good). Do you think that has something to do with their growth? Also interesting that N3FJP does not appear in the WRTC logger choices.
It is interesting. I run AClog for the main log, and the various supplemental programs for contests. Our club runs N3FJP for Field Day, and my team runs it for ARRL CW Sweepstakes with no complaints.
N3FJP is easy to learn and use which makes it very attractive for people who aren't heavily into contesting. I enjoyed it as my contest logger for years. Eventually I learned enough about N1MM+ to adopt it and realize it's in a different league.
@@petersichel9934 I've been wondering about switching to N1MM, but our whole team is so used to N3FJP that I'm not sure that could get folks on board. What were a couple of big points for you to make the switch?
@@kyleinokc N1MM+ is organized around a band map that records the position of each station on the band as you enter their call sign allowing you to quickly see which stations you've already worked versus ones you haven't as you tune across the band. If you connect to a cluster, the map will show stations others have spotted to help you find stations you need. N1MM has strong keyboard integration with WinKeyer so you can operate as much or even entirely from the keyboard if you like. It integrates with super-check partial to confirm whether the call you copied is a known contester. It has built-in support for 100s of contests and is updated almost weekly. As you learn more of what it can do, the integration keeps getting deeper. For a typical exchange you can type the call sign of the station you want to work and just press return for each next step. It knows what to do making smooth work of handling a CW pile up. It's not a program you'll master quickly, but if you want to go deeper into contesting it will go with you supporting multi-ops, SO2R, shared scoreboards, and stuff I'd never have thought of. Enjoy! K1AV
N1MM is organized around a band map that shows the call heard or worked on each frequency as you enter them. This makes it easy to see which stations you've already worked as you tune up and down the band. If you connect to a cluster it can show calls spotted by others. N1MM supports over 100 contests and is updated almost every week. The integration with your contest exchange, contest rules, WinKeyer, online call checking, radio, and other aids is deeper than you expect. You can operate almost entirely from the keyboard if you wish. It's not a program you will master quickly, but if you want to get deeper into contesting it will go there with you.